The Howl of the Lone Wolf
by SapphireShelle91
Summary: A boy is turned into a Wolf by his uncle and a girl is being hunted down by magical Bounty Hunters for her mystical cards. They are drawn together to fight whatever is upsetting the delicate magical balance. But will they be in time?
1. By Full Moon the Wolf Becomes

**Author's Note:** Hi there. I am trying my luck at writing for CardCaptor Sakura, though don't expect updates to quickly i have another fic going, which if i don't finish or update soon, i'm probaby going to be murdered and i'm not just saying that, I've actually been told.  
Anyway, this whole thing is sort of for Fun, I kinda remember that word and its meaning. This is a fic I started when I was having a writer's block on my other fic the one I meantion above; so, really whenever I just can't think what to write for that fic, I play around with this one, which actually works quite well, since they are about completely different themes all together. Ones about Vampire Armies with Werewolves and Witches thrown in and this one is about Cards and well there is a Werewolf in this but he's the main character rather then a throw in.  
So, hopefully I'll get to update this soon, I'm already kinda done with chapter 2, I think I have finished it, but I'll read ove it and see.  
Ok, I'll shut and I hope you enjoy. Oh and P.S. this has nothing (i think, for now at least), nothing to with my other CardCaptor Sakura one-shot.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own the characters or themes in this fic, they belong to CLAMP

* * *

**Chapter 1**

**By Full Moon the Wolf Becomes**

The full moon shone over Tokyo city. A tall, young man with messing chestnut brown hair ran down a dark alley, a gleaming sword in one hand and in the other, a Lazin Board Compass with a beam of blue light shooting out from it, into the direction he was running. He turned a corner and suddenly came upon a dead end.

He checked his compass to make sure that he had understood it correctly, he clearly had. Putting his compass away into his jacket, he continued down the alley with caution, his sword held out ready in front of him.

He focused his aura, letting it surround him, to flow out into alley, to pick up anything out of the ordinary.

"I know you're here." He whispered into the darkness. A faint chuckle came from the end of the alley, it grew louder and louder with each step he took.

"Li Syaoran! What a pleasure it is to see you again." A shadowy figure suddenly materialised at the alley end, this however did not faze Syaoran at all. He had been raised from a young age to be accustomed to this sort of thing; after all he wouldn't be the pride of his family if he had let this sort of thing bother him.

"It is hardly a pleasure for me though, Uncle." Syaoran growled, walking towards the shadowy man with strong, even steps, his head held high, his sword at the ready.

His uncle chuckled once again.

"Ah, my poor boy, I see you too have fallen victim to the lies that our," he gave a snort, "great family clings to so desperately."

Syaoran dark scowl grew darker. What the hell was his unpredictable, dangerous uncle on about?

"What are you talking about?" Syaoran demanded angrily. He was angry because he was afraid that the doubts that he already had towards his family were about to grow larger if he continued to listen to his Uncle.

His Uncle smiled nastily.

"Do you want to know, Syaoran? Do you really want to know? Or do you want to continue on your path as disposable Dog for the family like your father before you?" His Uncle voice was teasing, but also rang with truth with the last bit. Syaoran shook with fury.

"How dare you! How dare you speak of your Clan like that?" He spat.

"Yes, how dare I, but really Syaoran, we know the real truth behind your anger, your Father, am I right. Haven't you always wonder what happen to him? Why he simply just disappeared one day. You know that the same thing will happen to you in the future. Why not leave before that happens. And better yet, join me and we'll reshape the clan the way we want it. We can even make it so that you can be with the little Card Mistress. The Clan still hasn't forgiven you for losing the Clow Cards to her have they?"

Syaoran hesitated. What his Uncle said went around and around his head. His proposal sounded better than any of the options that he had ever been given by the Li Council.

His heart ached at the thought of being able to see Sakura again. They hadn't seen each since they had been fourteen, when he had been allowed to stay for a time before being recalled back to Hong Kong to undergo more intense training. That had been over three years.

"So Syaoran, what do you say." His Uncle took a step towards. Syaoran looked up into his Uncle's equally amber eyes and he could see the wickedness within them and that reminded him of his mission, which he couldn't return from until his Uncle was capture or dead.

"No, I refuse." Syaoran said moving into an attack stance. "I'm here to take you back to the confines of the Clans estate where you will remain for the course of your life. You are a danger to the Clan and to the people outside of it. You will submit to me or I will bring you down. I am not afraid to kill you"

The cloaked man stared at the determined young man in front of him and grinned. The boy had spirit and power that was greater than what the Li Council could hold. The boy would come around to seeing his way but for the moment the boy needed to be given time to think without the powerful influence of the Council. He slid a hand beneath his long cloak and withdrew a staff. Different to Clow Reed's staff, for it only had a dark crystal at the end of the long dark wooden pole. He could see the boy's eyes widen with surprise before hardening once again, readying himself for a fight, that he himself knew he had already won. He had no intention of killing the boy, but to just keep him in Japan for awhile, to give himself time to finish his plans.

"I am deeply sorry to do this to you, Syaoran, but since you really are bringing this on to yourself I really have no other choice but this." He told the boy regretfully. The boy didn't even flinch, he didn't even bother to try and understand what his Uncle meant. His mind was only focus on what was to be done.

The moment he waved his staff, Syaoran was already swinging his sword to counter the blow, what he didn't know was that was exactly what his Uncle had wanted him to do.

The moment the staff and sword hit each, a light exploded between them.

Syaoran eyes widen in shock. This was something that he had never seen before; he hadn't even sense that much power within the staff or his Uncle for that matter, to create this sort of energy.

He could vaguely hear his Uncle chanting something in a forgotten language but all he was truly aware of at that moment was the pain that was shotting threw his body, up from his arms that were still clutching his sword tightly. But he was losing grip of his sword with each moment of pain. He was finding it difficult to stand too. He fell to his knees gasping as agony ripped threw his being.

"What are you doing to me?" He finally managed to gasp out. His Uncle was impressed that he had managed to even speak with what was happening to him.

"Nothing too terrible, it'll wear off from time to time I believe. I'm just giving you uninterrupted time to think in peace about the Clan's ways and my offer." He explained and patting his nephew messy, shaggy head. He closed his eyes and the two disappeared from the alley and rematerialised under a tree in a pretty yellow and orange park, close to where a huge Penguin slide stood.

"Now you be a good Little Wolf and go find your girl, so that she can keep you safe while you're like this." and with that he disappear again, leaving behind a large, trembling amber-chestnut brown wolf, that had passed out from the pain of its transformation from boy to animal.

* * *

In a house not so far from the King Penguin Park, a girl sat bolt up right in her bed, startled by the sudden burst of power that had disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.

She didn't understand the power that she had felt, for it had been nothing like what she had ever felt before, but still, saying that, it reminded her of how Syaoran magic.

She frowned as she swung herself up and out of her warm bed and padded lightly to her window, opening it, letting the crisp autumn air into her room. She had been pretty sure she had sense Syaoran magic too. But that was impossible! He was in Hong Kong. _Where he belongs_, she thought sadly, but she continued to lean on her windowsill, staring out into the cold night. Something had happen within the magical realm that was going to change the balance, for better or for worst, it was too early to tell.

"Kero? What do you make of this?" The girl asked when she had finally prodded her Sun Guardian awake. Her Guardian, Cerberus or just Kero for short, floated near her head in his mini form. His small arms crossed and his teddy bear face was pulled into a frown.

"It senses like a Li, but it is different from the Kid's magic, but still Li's magic none the less. But the source of it has gone." Kero explained to his Mistress, who sighed and looked back out the window almost longingly.

"What is it Sakura?" Kero asked his Mistress puzzled.

"Did you by any chance sense something else, another Li that, um, sensed like, um, Syaoran?" Sakura asked Kero, not looking away from her window.

Kero stared at his Mistress in surprise. What did she mean? Was the brat that much on her mind to make her think that when she sensed another Li, he might be around?

This whole thing made Kero edgy; he didn't like the changes in the Magic Balance that he was feeling. However, he did not voice his concerns to Sakura, she had enough on her mind for the night, he might tell her in the morning, seeing how she was then.

"Go back to sleep, Sakura, you have school tomorrow and you might try and get there on time for a change." Sakura stuck her tongue out at her Guardian for the comment at her late sleeping in the morning. She smiled at him tiredly as she went back to her bed, pulling her blankets up passed her head and curled up there.

Kero, however, continued to float beside the open window that Sakura had forgotten to close. Now that all was quiet, he could sense something still close by that was out of ordinary.

Glancing back at his Mistress, he flew out the window, out into the open night.

He flew carefully, for his eyes were closed as to see with his mind eye the location of the weak, but strangely familiar aura.

He flew into Penguin Park, around Penguin slide. There he found the source of the aura he had been searching for. His eyes widen in amazement at the sight of the source of the aura.

A Dog?

No, the creature was too big for a dog.

A Wolf?

No way! A wolf could not create a magical aura, not like this one. Not like a magical human's aura.

Now that he was closer to the aura, he started to rethink what Sakura had said about sensing the Brat, maybe. For the aura did seem to belong to Brat, weak as it was.

But… then if it was the Brat's aura he was sensing, why was it coming from a wolf?

He flew closer and noticed that the wolf was trembling, as if it was in great pain.

As he flew even closer, the wolf eyes open and widen at the sight of him. It lifted its head up weakly and opened its mouth as if to speak. Of course no words came from its throat, nothing but a growl.

"Now, I'm going to take a really big long shot here, but by any chance are you the brat?" Kero asked the wolf, who let out another growl and snapped its jaw at him.

"Fine, are you Li Syaoran?" Kero sighed. The wolf let out a whine and wagged his tail weakly.

"I'll take that as a yes." Kero grumbled, the wolf, Syaoran, growled and struggled to sit up, flinching in pain as he did so.

"Easy Brat, your body is still trying to cope with the change of form." Kero told the wolf boy gently. The boy lowed himself slowly back down, curling himself up into a ball. Kero noticed that behind the boy was his sword and his Lazin compass.

"We're going to have to move soon, you know, because most people aren't use to seeing a wolf in Penguin Park." Kero said, sitting down on Syaoran shoulder. Syaoran made a grumbling whining sound.

"Then I'll bring Sakura here and we'll take you back to her place while we sort you out." Syaoran's head whipped around to stare up at Kero at the mention of Sakura's name, his amber eyes, the only thing about him that still remain human like, were filled with hope, but not just for the chance that she might be able to turn him back, Kero mused, a sly smile pulling on his teddy bear features.

Two remain under the tree until the first creaks of dawn were visible on the horizon.

"Come on, Brat, time to move." Kero sighed, flying off Syaoran's shoulder into the air.

Syaoran once again struggled to stand on his four paws. It was awkward and uncomfortable. He shook slightly; he still hurt from the transformation, but not so much as before.

Now that he was up, he now had to figure out how he was suppose to walk. He looked down at his legs doubtfully; he was never going to be able run like this, let alone walk.

"Come on, Brat, we need to move you out of sight." Kero complained over his head. He shot him a disgruntle look and took his first awkward step as a wolf. One step and he fell flat on his snort. He let out a yelp as he shook the grass and dirt out of his delicate nose. Over his head Kero was rolling around threw the air, laughing his head off. Syaoran snapped his jaw at the stuff animal in frustration.

He tried again to stand and was successful in doing that. He took his first step even more slowly then last time and this time he didn't fall flat on his snout, much to his ego's relief.

At first it was slow going, for Syaoran was still getting use to moving his limbs as they need to be moved.

Kero kept his comment about this to himself, to save the brat from further humiliation and himself from a sure thunder fist attack the moment Syaoran became human again, that was, if he became human again.

Kero shook his head firmly; no they'd find a way to turn Syaoran back into a human.

When the sun was more fully in the sky, they found a nice patch of heavier trees that children rarely played near. There was a nice hole already dug out under the roots of one of trees.

Syaoran gratefully collapsed into the hole, curling himself up into a tight ball, closing his eyes, trying to ignore the aching in his limbs.

"You'll be ok, Brat. You'll get use to it and we'll find a way to turn you back promise." Kero said trying to sound reassuring and confident. Syaoran however heard the doubt in his voice and snorted. Kero stuck his tongue out at the wolf boy.

He needed to get home before Sakura went to school, so that he could bring her here and… and what? He wasn't sure, but anything would be better than leaving the Brat like this.

But he needed to leave the Brat anyway so that he could go get Sakura.

"Listen Brat, I need to go and get Sakura before she goes to school, I won't be long, but will you be ok for half an hour?"

Syaoran open one amber eye and gave him an 'are you kidding me' look.

"Fine, I'm going. Just don't die while I'm gone ok." And with that he flew off at top speeds, but also still trying to remain inconspicuous.

He flew back threw Sakura's open bedroom window and did a three-sixty in the air in her room. It was empty and it was only seven-thirty! Why wasn't she still asleep?

"Of all the morning that she had to wake up early." He nearly yelled, which he could now get away with doing, since Touya had moved out two years ago and Sakura's father was hardly ever around, working long hours at the university, for some reason unknown to him and Sakura.

"SAKURA" He bellowed as he hurtled down the stairs to the kitchen. She wasn't there either, nor was she in the bathroom or in the living room. She was nowhere in the house, she really had gone early.

"Unbelievable." He muttered as he floated back up to Sakura's bedroom. The apocalypse was coming! He knew that know. It had to be coming, what other sign did he need then Sakura getting up early to prove that. He continued to float around Sakura's room, stunned.

* * *

"Sakura-san, are you alright." Tomoyo peered at her best friend anxiously. Sakura had been out of it for most of the day, which wasn't usual in itself, it was just Sakura kept looking around her nervously.

"Ah, I'm fine, Tomoyo-san, just tired." Sakura said trying to reassure her friend. Of course Tomoyo wasn't buying it and she waited quietly for a further explanation. Sakura sweat-dropped heavily, before giving in.

"Last night, both Kero and I sensed a strange aura. Kero said it was of the Li clan magic, but it was different from Syaoran's, but we couldn't get a real go feel for it, because it disappear pretty much as soon as it appear. And," she took a deep breath, trying to control her emotions, "Kero wasn't there when I woke up this morning, I mean I left my window open and so I'm guessing he went out to check out the source without me," her eyes darken at this, "but he didn't come back. I thought to wait around but I remember I had early morning cleaning duties since Naoko was sick yesterday and today." Sakura finished. Tomoyo nodded, she was quickly processing all that Sakura had told her, filling in bits that she was sure Sakura had left out, she was pretty sure Sakura was thinking about Syaoran. For who else, but he, could get her into such a state.

But at that moment the only advice, encouragement she could think to give Sakura was reassurance that she was sure Kero would come back soon, with really good, full explanation as to where he had been that night.

"He might have found himself a secret girlfriend, that he's been waiting for the right opportunity to introduce her to Sakura-chan." Tomoyo said dramatically, placing a hand over her heart, her eyes filled with stars. Sakura lips turned up into a smile and before she could stop it, she started to laugh hopelessly at the thought of Kero having a secret girlfriend. With what? A stuffed cat?

Both girls went back to class giggling, their friends staring at them startled, not getting why Sakura and Tomoyo would be laughing at the Quadratic formula.

* * *

School was over for the day and Sakura was walking home. She was taking her time getting there, for there'd be no one there unless Kero had come back, so she decided to detour by Penguin Park.

She smiled slightly as she watch and listen to children play around the play-set. She wander over to the swing-set and sat down heavily on the slightly too small seat and started to swing herself back and forth. As she swung, she looked at the silent swing beside her, where Syaoran had sat almost seven years ago; quietly listening to her pouring her heart over the fact the Yukito had rejected her. She smiled wistfully at the memory of him hugging her and telling her he was sure she'd find her most special person.

_Syaoran, where are you? What are you doing with yourself? Do you think of me at all now? It's been so long since your last letter, are you all right? I wish I could see you again._

She dragged her feet on the ground to stop the swing and got up of it, looking around her fondly. The cherry blossom trees still looked beautiful even with autumn's gold's and brown's.

She smiled as she walked threw the rich golden and red trees. Her smile however faulted when something that didn't belong under a cherry blossom tree caught her eye. She moved towards the tree slowly, her heart beating in un-rhythmic pattern. Was that what she thought it was?

She crouched down beside the tree and stared down at the sword and Lazin board that lay, hidden by roots from the casual passer-by. Both sword and board looked an awful lot like the ones she had seen Syaoran use.

Her heartbeat grew even fast and more out of beat.

_Calm down, calm down_, she ordered herself. She picked up the items gingerly, placing the Lazin board into her school bag and held the long Sword close by her side.

Now that she was clutching the sword, she knew immediately that the Sword was Syaoran's and that Syaoran was close by and needed her help.

She felt as if the Sword was guiding her to where its Master was. She was terrified as to what she was going to find, but she kept going with determination.

Suddenly a small yellow object flew over her head.

"CERBERUS!" She shrieked and the yellow teddy bear crashed into a tree.

Sakura winced as she watched Kero bounce off branches (on his head) as he made his way down to the grassy ground.

"Sakura, what are you doing here?" he asked groggily. Around his neck was a bag filled with food, she was amazed none of it had fallen out with Kero's bouncing descent. _Maybe Tomoyo-san was right, maybe Kero does have a secret girlfriend_, Sakura thought dumbly. She turned to leave Kero when she felt another tug on her hand from the sword, which had grown extremely hot all of a sudden.

"Damn, I completely forgot about them." Kero cursed himself. Sakura frown at him at him questioningly.

She stared from him, to the Sword, to the bag of food, then back again, trying to make the puzzle pieces fit together.

"Kero, what's going on?" Sakura started to ask, but Kero had already picked himself off the ground and was motioning her to follow him, of course leaving her to carry the heavy bag of food. How he had managed to fly over town without being notice was beyond her.

She moved quickly after him, with the bag of food over her shoulder.

They enter a close dense grove of tree and the Sword grew even hotter by her side. Sakura's eyes widen as she saw the hairy shape curled it into a ball.

"Oi, Brat, looks whose here." Kero yelled above her as he flew towards the ball of fur. He landed on the shoulder of the fur ball, which immediately snapped at him.

"Kero, is that a wolf?" Sakura whispered, her body shaking in fear. The wolf and Kero's heads swung around to stare at her.

"Ah, Sakura, you see this might seem unbelievable to you, but um this is um this is, well it's the Brat." Kero explained, or tried to at least. The wolf snapped at him again.

Sakura's eyes widen as she stared from Kero to the Wolf, then back again. She sank slowly to her knees, her mouth hanging open.

"Syaoran?" She whispered. The wolf dragged himself to his wobbling feet and moved slowly over to her.

She could see his sad amber eyes clearly; they looked like human eyes as he came sit in front of her. Without thinking she raised her hand and rubbed his ear, a slight smile playing her face.

Syaoran let out a whine and closed his eyes, leaning his head against her hand.

"Oh Syaoran, what happen to you?" She mumbled scratching him behind his ear. If he had been human, she wouldn't have been this affectionate with him and if he had been human and Syaoran wouldn't have allowed Sakura do this to him, but at the moment he was so miserable and sore that he couldn't care less that he was meant to act above affections.

Kero smirked at the scene, though it looked a little bizarre a girl talking and scratching the ear of a rather dangerous looking wolf, no matter how hurt he looked to be.

Kero looked away from the two and frown. Something was coming, something that wanted to cause pain to the young ones.

He transformed into his true form which caught Sakura's and Syaoran's attention. The two spun in his direction.

Syaoran once again scrambled to his shaking feet and stood protectively in front of Sakura. Sakura placed a hand on Syaoran's shoulder. His shoulder came up just passed her waist. He was a big wolf, not that she had actually seen a real wolf before but she guessed he was bigger than normal wolves.

The three stood at attention. Sakura summon her wand in one hand and held Syaoran's Sword in the other. Syaoran was pressing heavily against her legs, if he put any more pressure on her legs, she'd fall over, but she knew he was trying to protect her from whatever was coming their way the best he could, by putting himself in its path. She didn't like this idea much, but let Syaoran be.

The air in front of them rippled and wavered, the lines around the invisible shape, where at first the only thing they could see. Slowing the huge figure within the lines started to appear. Sakura heartily wished the thing had just remained invisible and they'd fight it blind, for the body was human, but its head was a mixture of dog and pig. A pig nose and eyes with dog ears and its tongue hanging out of its mouth, slobbering all over it leather armour shirt. A rotten smell expelled from its being that made all their stomachs turn.

_**Bounty-hunter.**_

Sakura jumped at the sound of Syaoran's voice inside her head. She looked down at Syaoran, but he seemed completely unaware that she had just heard his thought. Maybe she had just imagined it.

She turned her attention to the huge creature. It was taller than her; she only came up to its elbow.

It stared at them hungrily, pulling a great big sword from its sheath on its back; the blade was as big as Sakura's head as it looked ready to take her head off. She gulped and gripped her staff and Syaoran's sword harder, ready to attack and defend. She only wished she had thought to bring her cards with her.

The creature took a step towards her, making the grass die with each step.

"Cey-ards?" it said in a long slow voice, looking straight at Sakura, holding out a huge dustbin size hand.

"Hoe?" Sakura asked blankly. She looked wildly at Cerberus and Syaoran, who both looked blank.

"Cey-ards?" it demanded louder, taking another step towards her. She took a step backwards, her back hitting a tree. Syaoran growled at her side.

_Cey-ards? What the hell are Cey-ards?_ She wondered wildly, staring up at the closing in creature, _why, oh why, didn't I think to bring my cards with me?_

_Cards? Cey-ards? Oh no!_ The light bulb in her head went on, as it did for Kero and Syaoran.

"You want my Cards?" Sakura asked, her voice trembling. The creature nodded its head vigorously; white, gluey, saliva spraying out of its mouth as it did so. Ew!

"Well, I'm sorry, but you can't have them, for one thing I don't have them with me and secondly and more importantly and their my responsibility and it's my duty to protect them." Sakura told the creature firmly, her head held high.

The creature shook its head again, the three ducked to miss getting sprayed by saliva.

"Cey-ards!" it bellowed.

"NO!" Sakura yelled back. The creature looked for a moment rather stunned, before it gave a roar of fury; swing one of its huge tree trunks arms at them. Sakura let out a little shriek and jumped out of the way, Syaoran and Kero on either side of her. The creature swung again and again, and they kept jumping and running out of the way. But soon, both Sakura and Syaoran grew tired. Syaoran limbs were once again hurting him. He hated feeling and being weak.

"You are hardly weak." Sakura gasped at him, trying to smile at him encouragingly. They jumped together as the creature swung his huge Sword after them. The sword cut threw a tree, the three stared at the clean cut threw the tree with wide eyes, they sweat-dropped.

"That could have been us." Sakura gagged, still staring at the tree.

_**And it still could be**_. Syaoran complained, bounding over to her and shoving her to the ground, the Sword missing them by a hair.

"Thanks." Sakura wheezed, clutching her winded stomach.

"This is getting us nowhere." Cerberus yelled from over their heads.

_**Wimp! Get down here and help it go somewhere.**_ Syaoran thought.

"No, really?" Sakura said sarcastically, as she and Syaoran jumped another blow from the creature's arms and sword.

Now that she was getting tired and her sense weren't as alert as they had been, her dodges were getting slower and slower, to the point where she was just barely moved herself out of the road in time.

_I can't last much longer_, she thought desperately. Just as she was thinking this, she did not sense the creature's huge fist swing towards her.

"Sakura!" Cerberus bellowed, throwing a flame ball at the creature, but not soon enough. The Bounty-Hunter's great fist collided with Sakura just as she tried to jump out of the road. It hit her lower rips and sent her flying into a tree.

"Sakura." Cerberus bellowed again, throwing another flaming ball at the creature, which bellowed in pain and stamped around the clearing wildly, narrowly missing Sakura's legs.

Syaoran growled and broke into a gallop; he was amazed at how fast he could run when he wanted to. He lunged himself up on to the creature's back and dug his claws into the creature's shoulder blades to keep himself from being thrown off or merely just falling off from the mad stamping. The creature's huge hands reached up and behind its dog-pig head, trying to claw Syaoran off its back. Syaoran, however, refused to let go and bit the back of the creature's thick neck. As the creature's blood flowed into his mouth, he felt a strong urge to throwing up. The blood was foil tasting as well as smelling and was thick and black in colouring.

All of a sudden the creature stopped struggling and started to fall forward, like a tree that that had been cut from low on its trunk. Syaoran pulled his mouth from the Bounty-Hunter's neck and jumped from its back before it crashed to the autumn ground. He stared at the Bounty-Hunter in confusion. He could smell death, but he was pretty sure that he hadn't had a killing hold on it. He looked up at Cerberus, who was swooping down to land, his paws bloody.

_**Maybe the stuff animal had been useful after all**_, Syaoran thought grudgingly. He then remembered Sakura and spun around to look in her direction, praying that she was alright. To his surprise, he saw Sakura was on her feet, shaking, one hand clasping her side that had been hammered. He trotted over to her nudge her other side gently with his nose. Sakura smiled at him and scratched his head. Her eyes widen as she took in the blood covering his mouth and his front.

"Are you ok? Did you get hit?" She demanded, crouching down and filling his front for any injury. Syaoran shook his head.

_**I'm fine.**_

"That's good, I'm so glad." She stood up again slowly, wincing in pain.

"How bout you Cerberus?" she called to her guardian. Cerberus was walking around the corpus of the Bounty-Hunter, to make sure it was really dead.

"I'm fine, yourself?" Cerberus asked her, his golden eyes widen in worry for her. Sakura smiled.

"I'm alive, that's something." She laughed; Syaoran and Cerberus fell over in disbelief at Sakura optimism. Sakura sweat-dropped.

"Are you two ok."

"Just fine." Cerberus sighed. He placed one of his great paws on to the creature's shoulder and rolled him on to his back.

Syaoran now saw what had most likely killed the Bounty-Hunter. His sword was protruding out of the creature's chest, right where the heart might be located. Syaoran and Cerberus looked at Sakura questioningly. Sakura smiled sheepishly.

"I didn't think it was that great a throw." She admitted, laughing sheepishly, one hand behind her head. The wolf boy and the winged lion fell over again. Sakura jumped forward, wincing as she did so, moving to help if she could, not getting that they had fallen over because of her.

"I think we needed to go home and clean up… and eat." Sakura added the last bit for Syaoran benefit, for his stomach grumbled loudly. His tail went between his legs in embarrassment. Sakura laughed and ruffled his head fur happily.

"I'll make you some pancakes." She told him kindly, to his even greater embarrassment his tail wagged vigorously at the thought of food.

They had to wait for another half hour for the full cover of darkness before they could head off for Sakura's house.

The house was dark when they got there and empty too. Sakura gave a small resign sigh and walked around switching lights on before heading to the kitchen to start cooking.

"Sakura, I think you should call your brother or your father. Or even Tomoyo-san." Kero, he had returned to his mini form at the arrival of their house, said. Sakura shot him a questioningly look.

"Sakura, you're hurt." Kero grumbled. Sakura shifted uncomfortable, her side did hurt quite a bit and maybe getting her brother of a Doctor over wasn't such a bad idea, but… then he would question her as to how she got hurt, why there was a wolf looking dog in the house and complicated questions like that, that she really couldn't answer at the moment.

"I'll call Tomoyo-san." Sakura promised the two worrywarts who were invading her kitchen, "after I make dinner." She added under her breath.

She moved towards the stove but Syaoran move in between her and it.

"You're not going to move until I ring Tomoyo, right?" she asked him, sighing. Syaoran nodded his head.

"Fine, bossy." And with that she stalked to the phone in the hall and dialled Tomoyo cell-phone. She stood listening to the phone ringing, waiting for an answer.

After the third ring, Tomoyo answered.

'_Sakura-san? Is something the matter? Are you all right?'_ Sakura moaned at the concern she could hear in her best friend's voice.

"I'm fine." Sakura started to say, but Syaoran nipped her gently on the fingers.

"Ow…Ok, I take that back, I'm not fine. I got hurt, but not badly"

Syaoran whined loudly.

'_Sakura-chan, was that a dog?'_ Tomoyo asked, it was the only thing she could think to ask. She was already walking down her main stairs, making for the front door; it was still early, even though if it hadn't been, neither her mother nor her guard would have been able to stop her from going over to Sakura's house. She grabbed her coat out of the coat closet and motion for her bodyguards to stay where they were.

"Ah, well you see… ah, yeah it is a …dog." Tomoyo raised an eyebrow at her friend's lame explanation. She was now even more intrigued then ever to get over to Sakura's.

"I'll be right there." Tomoyo said and she heard Sakura's sigh of relief.

* * *

The sight that met Tomoyo eyes when she walked threw Sakura's front door was not what she expected. Yes, she had expected to see a dog, but not one as big or as shaggy or as, well, wolf like as this one. And yes, she had expected Sakura to be a little hurt, not that she had wanted her to be, but as she watch Sakura limp towards her, she only just realised how badly hurt Sakura was.

"Sakura-chan?" Tomoyo asked. Sakura smiled at her, with difficulty. It was very clear she was in a great deal of pain. Kero was ridding on the back of the wolf like dog shoulder, that was walking as close to Sakura as it could, but it too, Tomoyo could see, was in a great deal of pain also.

The two girls, the wolf dog and the stuff animal went to the kitchen, where Sakura explained the best she could what had happen that afternoon. She couldn't really explain Syaoran's part at all, since she didn't know it nor could he tell it, which was clearly annoyed him greatly.

Tomoyo took the whole bizarre story in her strides. She accepted Syaoran as a wolf, and promised to make him Wolf customs. He grumbled about that and snarled at Kero when he started laughing at the thought.

"You really should call your brother to look over this." Tomoyo told Sakura once they had order both Syaoran and Kero out of the room to go kill each somewhere else, while Tomoyo looked over Sakura nicely colour bruised ribs.

"I can't." Sakura wailed, wincing as she lowered her arms and pulled her old T-shirt back down.

"Sakura-chan, your rib may be broken." Tomoyo said, begging her friend to understand the seriousness of this.

"But if I call Onii-chan, he'll ask question, besides he'll be worried." Sakura mumbled hanging her head. "And I don't want to worry him anymore then he already is." Sakura added firmly, her head once again held high.

Tomoyo admired her friend's selflessness, but there were times that sometimes you just need to go out and get help. Another person, another doctor, came to her.

"How about we call Yukito-san and make him promise not to tell your brother?" Tomoyo asked hopeful. Sakura bit her lip and thought for a bit.

"Yue might have an idea how to turn Syaoran back into a human." She mused slowly. She stared at Tomoyo and gave a slight nod of her head. Tomoyo sighed in relief.

"I'll go call him now." Tomoyo said getting up from the kitchen table and went over to the phone. Sakura remain where she was. She was too tired and sore to bother getting up, even though her stomach was grumbling. She heard the kitchen door being pushed open and turned her head to watch Syaoran and Kero come in. She could see Syaoran was sore and was not at all happy, she could see that even if he did have the face of a wolf. That was probably why he was unhappy. It mustn't be much fun walking around on all four when you were use to walking on two!

Tomoyo sighed; being put on hold was such a drag, especially when they had lousy music playing.

'_Hello, Doctor Tsukishiro__ speaking.'_ Tomoyo sighed in relief, she had been afraid he had gone home.

"Hello, Yukito-san." She greeted, grinning at Sakura, who smiled in return before laying her head once more on her arms. Syaoran on the floor beside her feet grumbled and looked away from Tomoyo. She grinned in amusement, _he's still jealous of Yukito-san_, she thought.

'_Tomoyo-chan? Is everything all right? Do you want me to get Touya?'_

"No, no, no, you don't need to get Kinomoto-kun, but I do need you to come to Sakura-chan's house right a way, if that isn't any trouble."

'_Is Sakura-chan hurt?'_

"Yes, but she also needs Magical help."

'_I'll be right over. I'll have to go out the back way to avoid Touya. But lucky I don't have any more patients.'_ Yukito laughed in relief.

"Thank you." Tomoyo mumbled and hung up. Smiling she turned to her audience, which was made up Syaoran and Kero; Sakura had fallen asleep at the table.

* * *

Yukito was still trying to make sense of what Sakura was telling him even after he had finished strapping her bruised ribs. They weren't broken, which was a marvel from what he had heard but he could sense that a couple had been a fractured and would take time to heal, but because of her strong magic she would heal faster than a normal human being.

Once he was done strapping Sakura's ribs and the food that had been ordered arrived, he let Yue take over.

Yue stared at Syaoran as he sat glaring up at him. He really didn't know how to change Syaoran back, for he had never seen anything quite like this and he told the group so. Hearing this made the group groan loudly, this hadn't been what they had wanted to hear.

"I am sorry." Yue said coolly. No one thought once about his coolness, that was just how he always was.

"It's O-kay." Sakura mumbled her eyes droopy. She was just barely awake.

Yue transformed back into Yukito and gently swung Sakura up into his arms and carried her upstairs to her room, with Tomoyo, Kero and Syaoran following slowly after him.

He laid Sakura gently on to her bed and Tomoyo pulled her covers over her. Sakura snuggled carefully under her thick, warm bedding.

"I think she should remain home for tomorrow at least." Yukito advised Kero as they all stood by Sakura's front door.

Kero nodded his head seriously.

"Do you need a lift home, Tomoyo-san?" Yukito asked her kindly. Tomoyo nodded her head, eyeing the darkness outside.

"Yes please, I came without my bodyguards you see, I didn't know what to expect so I decided to leave them out of it." She explained. Yukito nodded in understanding. He turned back to Kero and Syaoran.

"I think you," he directed at Syaoran gently, "should remain here for the time being. Staying close to Sakura is a good way to protect you from whoever did this to you."

Syaoran grumbled but nodded his furry head in agreement.

"Well I'll see you tomorrow." Tomoyo promised as she walked out the door behind Yukito closing it behind her gently.

"Try not to kill each other too loudly; you might wake Sakura-chan." Tomoyo added quickly, earning her two heated glares. She locked the door laughing quietly and bounced after Yukito wondering what sort of adventures Sakura and tow would be sure to have.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Well how was it? Bad? Good? Should just give up on it?  
Well, for one thing it was long, so hopefully it'll satisfy you guys for now until the next update, which at the rate that um, nevermind, chapter 2 will be up pretty soon, like tomorrow, tops.  
Also, I need a name for Syaoran's Uncle. I have a few names line up... Ok, i have two, but I'm open to surgestions for you.

Ok thanks for reading and please review.


	2. Questions Of Sanity

**Author's Note:** I got bored, since I'm kinda waiting for another chapter i want to be posted to be read threw and stuff.  
I quite like this chapter, though it is a bit bizarre and out of the norm, but that's kinda what I like to write, but anyway, this chapter actually makes me laugh in some places.  
I'm also posting this just in case I don't get near a library for a while when I'm at my Dad's (I'm going down to my Dad's today and he doesn't have internet. Yes, all mourn with me!), I won't be updating for at least over a week. Thats not too bad i know, but I still feel bad, plus I already have several things typed up dying to be posted and i can't.  
Ok, I had my tantrum so i'm over it and i hope you like this chapter!

Oh yeah, for those of you who might be confused.  
**_Bold and Italic_** is Syaoran talking in his head  
_Italic_ is general thinking  
_'Italic'_ when someone on the other line is talking  
And yeah that's pretty much it.  
Once again, I hope you enjoy!

**Chapter 2**

**Questions of Sanity**

Syaoran grunted at the sound of an alarm clock ringing. He didn't have an alarm clock that sounded like that! His made a beeping sound not a ringing.

He opened his eyes and looked around him startled. Where was he?

He tried and failed to get up. What was the matter with him? Why did he feel so weird?

Slowly his dream, well he hoped very much that it was a dream, came back to him.

He had found his uncle, who had then turned him into a wolf and dropped him off at King Penguin Park and then he had been later found by…

He moved his head slowly, taking in every detail of the room that he was in. It was a neat room, with a desk and bookcase, with a TV in the corner and a bed. And the occupant within the bed was shifting and wiggling and groaning.

Syaoran pulled himself stiffly to his four paws. He still wasn't completely use to walking on four but he was adapting far quicker than most would.

He padded lightly up to the head of the bed and stared at what he could vaguely make out as the top of a golden-brown head that was mostly hidden by the blanket pulled over it.

A whimper came from under the covers. Syaoran sat down beside the bed, unsure what to do. Should he wake her? Or let her be?

Another whimper came from under the covers, which helped him make up his mind on what he was going to do. Wake her up!

He got back up on his feet and hopped up on to her bed. He grabbed a bit of cover in his mouth and tugged it gently away from her head then barked. It was a soft bark, nothing aggressive about it, but it was enough to wake Sakura up from her nightmare.

Sakura blinked a couple times up at the burning amber eyes that gazed solemnly down at her.

"You know," she said in a way of greeting, "a couple of years ago I would have found this really strange and scary and probably would have been screaming a lot, long before this point of time."

_**Thank God, you haven't screamed!**_ Syaoran thought to himself hopping lightly off the bed and stalking over to the bed Tomoyo had made for him before she left. It was made out of an old mattress and sheets. Tomoyo had promised that when she came over that evening she would bring him a proper bed. Really, he didn't actually care, he was a wolf!

Sakura swung herself stiffly out of her bed. She swayed slightly on her feet before she finally found her balance to actually take a step without falling down.

Syaoran watched her as she did this, taking her in fully. He hadn't had time yesterday to really notice the changes the last couple of year of separation had done to her. She was taller then she had been. Her hair was longer, falling a little past shoulder length and it flared in the front section around her face. Her face had lost all its child-like joy features, they had matured and she looked quite pretty, in a grown up way.

_**Even though she has always been pretty**_, he thought slyly. He shook his head fiercely. What was he thinking? But she was a different sort of beauty to say his sisters or Meilin or even Tomoyo. She was a quiet beauty, mostly over-looked by most passer-bys when she was standing with Tomoyo. But Syaoran could see how beautiful she was, even when she was limping slightly and had dark shadows under her eyes, with her hair in louse tangles.

"What?" Sakura asked him, noticing that he was watching her intently.

Syaoran made a grumbled bark, embarrassed that he had been sprung watching her

Sakura just smiled, oblivious to why he was grumpy and just pattered him kindly on the head, before picking her clothes for the day and limping to the bathroom.

When she came back though, Syaoran realised she was wearing her school uniform, as if she was actually planning to go to school in her condition. Now that he thought about she probably would. He shot across the room and sat in front of her bedroom door refusing to let her out.

"Come on, Syaoran, move." Sakura wailed, putting her hands on his shoulders, pushing at them to try and make him budge. He didn't move a muscle.

"I have to go to school…ow!" she clutched her side; her eyes squeezed shut in pain. Syaoran gave a pointed snort.

"Ok, ok! You win! You win!" she groaned, limping back to bed and flopping on to it. Syaoran lay himself down beside the bed, on guard duty to make sure she really had given up on the idea of going to school. Sakura could be quite stubborn when she wanted to be.

"You know, you're unbelievable!" Sakura stated grouchily. Syaoran gave a snort of agreement.

_**Yeah and that's new, how?**_

Sakura stared up at her ceiling and pulled a face. She was pretty sure she was hearing Syaoran voice. That or she was finally going insane like her brother always said she would with the whole card business and talking, flying stuff animals. Now she had a best friend turn into a huge wolf to add to her list of the Weird Happenings.

"I'm going to be sent to an insane alyssum before I even turn twenty." Sakura informed her ceiling as she had done numerous times before, though those times she had never had a growl in response. She turned her head ever so slightly on her pillow and saw that Syaoran was sitting up again and scowling at her fiercely, which was rather disconcerting since she could see quite a number of his pointed, sharp teeth.

"Well, it's true! With all the weird stuff that happens to me and my dreams, I'm surprised I'm not in one now!" she defended. Syaoran let out another growl and his scowl grew even more intense.

_**You almost sound like you want that to happen!**_

"See," She groaned, wrapping an arm over her eyes in despair, "I'm imagining that I'm hearing your voice in my head. How is that not insane?"

Syaoran blinked at her a couple of times.

_**You can hear me?**_ He asked dazed with delight.

Sakura lifted her arm from her eyes and glared at him.

"I think I can hear you!" she corrected him tartly; "there's a difference." Her arm dropped back over her eyes once more.

_**Sakura, I'm talking to you right now, how is that prove you're going insane?**_

"Cause your not suppose to be able to talk! You're a wolf!"

_**I'm not technically talking, I'm thinking,**_ he pointed out. Sakura open her mouth to argue but words seem to be failing her. She open and closed her mouth several times before finally giving up and closed her mouth tightly.

_**I win! You're not going insane**_, he teased triumphantly.

Without removing her arm from over her eyes, she swatted him on his furry shoulder with her free hand and said.

"Oh, shut up."

Syaoran let out a little snigger.

"What's going on?" Kero asked floating out of his draw, rubbing his eyes, clearly only just woke up because of the commotion.

"Syaoran was just proving that I'm not going insane, even though I can hear his voice even though he's a wolf." Sakura grumbled.

"You can hear him?"

Sakura sat up, shocked and stared at her guardian.

"Yes. Can't you?" she asked startled, looking from Syaoran to Kero, then back again.

Wolf boy and winged teddy bear shook their heads, silently grateful.

Sakura sighed, however sighed heavily.

"Oh, that's really convincing me that I'm not insane. Not!" She mumbled.

Syaoran snapped at her.

"Don't you snap at me." she snapped back at him. The two glared at each for a couple of moments.

_**Maybe you are insane because you think you're insane.**_ Syaoran grumbled at her. Sakura stuck her tongue out at him.

"This isn't normal." She complained loudly or she tried to but being loud hurt her side.

_**Like anything is normal with you.**_

"Oh shut up!"

_**We've been threw worst**_, Syaoran pointed out. _**Fighting Eriol was pretty bad**_.

"This is different; this is way, way different. Eriol never tried to turn any of us into animals."

_**Oh and making holes in the ground for you to fall into is SO much safer than this. Or that time you fell down the elevator shaft? Or the avalanche and snow storm that he caused that you had to try and stop?**_

"It's still different." Sakura grumbled, "Eriol never meant any real harm, and he always saved me when things started to get too rough. Besides, he was helping me change the cards into Sakura Cards."

_**What card did you change in the Elevator shaft?**_

"The Float." Sakura defended crabbily.

Syaoran grumbled. He had a feeling that the Elevator shaft trick Eriol pulled hadn't been a trail for Sakura changing a card but an excuse for him, Syaoran to get his heart in his throat at the thought of losing her forever. He pulled an unhappy wolf face.

"Are you two done with ripping each others throats out?" Kero asked, floating just out of range of getting swatted by Sakura and snapped at by Syaoran. The two could only shoot him death glares, which was bad enough.

"Um, since we're on the subject of Eriol don't you think you should give him a call?" Kero asked, flying even high to get out of Syaoran mouth reach, he really didn't want to become a chew toy. Syaoran was already growling and watching his process upwards intently.

Sakura just looked blank. Then her eyes grew brighter as she understood.

"And we should probably call your family too, Syaoran." She added, getting up off her bed.

Syaoran was suddenly in front of her, shoving her back on to her bed, shaking his head.

_**They can't know!**_

"What about you being wolfy? Syaoran you're always wolfy! They probably won't even be able to tell the difference!" Sakura teased, but Syaoran just glared up at her, but his eyes were pleading.

_**They can't know, at least not yet! I still have a job to do**_. _If I can still even do it now_, he looked down doubtful at his legs.

Sakura shot him a curious look, but did not question him

Sakura swung herself once again off her bed and padded lightly out of her room and downstairs to the phone, with Syaoran walking close to her side and Kero flying ahead of them.

She picked up the phone and dialled Eriol's home number, trying not to think of the phone bill that they where sure to get for this call, for she was sure it wasn't going to be a short one. Her brother was going to murder her!

A voice answered the other end of phone and Sakura released that the voice was speaking in English. She froze for a moment, gathering her thought, forcing herself to understand what was being said. She knew quite a bit of English and spoke and understood it quite well, thanks to Eriol and her English classes in middle school.

Once she gathered her thoughts, she started to process what was being said on the other end.

"Hello?" she said in a shaking voice. Her voice sounded so lame in English, she was so out of practise.

'_Who is this?'_ a thick, rich English voice demanded. Sakura started to panic.

"Kinomoto Sakura and I was wondering if I could speak to Hiiragizawa Eriol." She rushed out, though she was quite pleased by how clear her English sounded to her.

'_Oh,'_ the voice said sounding rather startled, _'yes, of course, wait a moment please.'_ There was silence on the other end.

_**I didn't know you spoke English.**_

Sakura glanced down at Syaoran, smiling sheepishly.

"I'm not very good."

_**You're better than me**_. He grumbled grudgingly, _**and I need to know how to speak many languages**_. He added to himself, though Sakura heard him quite clearly. Sakura was about to asked him why, when the other end of the phone was picked up again.

'_Sakura?'_ Sakura let out a breath of gratitude.

"Eriol, thanks, I kinda have a problem." She gushed out, still speaking in English.

'_Yes, I realised that. What is the matter?' _to her delight he was speaking Japanese.

"Syaoran's here." She heard a chuckle from the other end.

'_And that's a problem? Maybe you should talk to Tomoyo-san rather than me.'_ He teased her gently.

"He's a Wolf." That stopped his chuckling.

'_Pardon me?'_

"He's a Wolf! He got turned into a wolf by someone, he won't say who and now he's sitting in my kitchen as a wolf." Sakura repeated, panic vibrating threw out her voice.

'_How did this happen?'_ Eriol demanded.

"I don't know cos he hasn't told me and I don't think he's going to anyway." Sakura wailed. She turned to Syaoran. "Are you?"

_**Nope.**_

"Self-centre jerk." She snapped at him.

_**What's that?**_

"Why won't you let me help you?"

_**Cause it's none of your business!**_

"You're my friend, you are my business."

'_Um, excuse me.'_ Eriol said weakly. He could hear Sakura yelling at someone, presumably Syaoran, though he never heard any reply in return to her yelling except the odd bark. Bark? He started to grin slyly at the thought of Syaoran being a wolf, well on the bright side he was staying with Sakura.

"Sakura, the phone!" Kero bellowed over Sakura and Syaoran's heads.

The two looked up at him startled, then turn their heads to stare at the phone.

"Oh right, Eriol!" Sakura gasped. She picked up the phone again.

"Eriol?"

'_Welcome back!'_ Eriol sniggered slyly.

Sakura stuck her tongue out at the phone.

_**He can't see you, you know**_. Syaoran pointed out.

"Oh, shut up." She snapped at him.

'_I beg your pardon.'_ Eriol said sounding amused.

"Not you! Syaoran." She quickly amended. She shot Syaoran a warning glare.

'_Can Syaoran talk?'_ Eriol asked her softly.

"Well, no actually he can't physically talk, but he can talk in his head to people, people being just me it seems at the moment, but we only just figure that out that this morning. I don't know, I could hear a couple of thought yesterday," Syaoran let out a grunt of surprise and outrage, "but Kero can't, nor Yue nor Tomoyo can hear him… does this mean I'm losing my mind and going crazy?" Sakura rabbled.

_**You're not going crazy.**_

Sakura waved her hand at him to be silent.

'_No you're not going crazy.'_ Eriol chuckled though his mind was racing a hundred miles an hour.

"Are you sure about that?" Sakura asked.

_**You're NOT going CRAZY.**_ Syaoran repeat more loudly, anger evident in his tone.

"Ow, not so loud." Sakura complained, placing a hand against her throbbing head.

'_Sounds like the two of you are having fun.'_ Eriol mused vaguely; he wasn't really paying much attention on what might be happening on the other end of the phone. He was trying to think up different spells that could possible turn someone into an animal against their own will.

"It's not like that." Sakura complained, voicing Syaoran's complaint a long with her own.

Sakura slid down the wall to sit on the floor, holding the phone so that Syaoran could hear easier.

"So any idea's how to turn him back?"

'None yet. But it's kinda hard to come up with something when I can't actually see him, let alone sense what sort of spell has been put on him.'

"How many spells are there for turning someone into an animal?" Sakura asked panicking.

_**Not many**_. Syaoran grumbled.

'_Not many have enough power to do so. It very different from turning yourself into an animal, for that in its self is very difficult. But to turn another and one who can't turn into an animal in the first place, well that takes a lot.' _Eriol sighed heavily.

Syaoran made a grumbling sound and flopped to the floor, looking completely defeat by all stretches of the word. He didn't like Eriol much, actually he hated the guy's guts, but he had been hoping, much to his complete annoyance, that Eriol might have had the answer to turning him human again.

Sakura unconsciously placed her hand on his head and started to scratch him behind his ears.

"But who would want to turn Syaoran into a Wolf?" Sakura asked, continuing to scratch his ears.

'I don't know. You have to ask him.'

"But he won't tell me." Sakura argued and gave Syaoran soft, velvet ear a gentle tug.

'_Give him time.'_ Syaoran let out a grumble in his chest. Sakura sniggered.

"Um, Eriol, what should I do?" Sakura asked nervously.

'_Keep him safe and out of sight. How big is he? Can he pass as a normal dog?'_

Sakura glanced a Syaoran. For the type of dog he could possibly pass for he was too big and she told Eriol this.

'_Use the Small Card to make him smaller.'_ Eriol advised. Kero burst out laughing at the idea of a mini Syaoran wolf running around the house. Syaoran growled at him.

"Also Eriol," Sakura said, a little louder, sticking one finger in her ear to block out the noise the other two where making.

"A Bounty Hunter came for the Cards yesterday." Kero and Syaoran fell immediately silent.

'_Are you all right?'_ Eriol asked seriously.

"A couple of bruises but I'm fine, so are the Cards by the way. I didn't have them with me, so he couldn't get them."

'_Where is _he_ now?'_

"Dead. We all kinda, accidentally had a hand in killing him." Sakura hung her head guiltily. Syaoran and Kero starred at her in disbelief.

'_Was he human?'_ Eriol asked unfazed by this.

"I…I don't think so. I mean, he didn't look human, well to me anyway. Ah, but oh god what if he was! I murdered another human being." She gasped in terror, breathing hard, her heart pounding in her chest.

**Stupid, he wasn't human! He was a demon! Demon's are really, really bad and they kill a lot of innocent people, so you were actually doing the world a favour by killing it.**

"It wasn't human, Sakura-chan, it was a demon." Kero tried sooth to his panicking Mistress, not knowing he was saying the exact same thing as Syaoran just had. Syaoran glared up at him.

_**I just said that**__**!**_

"He just said that."

'_Maybe you two think a lot alike.'_ Eriol teased. He could hear quite well what was happening on Sakura's end.

"We do not." Kero and Syaoran yelled, though Sakura was the only one who heard Syaoran and giggled, though she was getting quite headache,

'_Sakura.'_ Eriol was back to serious again, _'I don't know yet, what to make of these events. I can't tell if they are coincidence, though I think not, or if this is all part of someone's grand plan.'_ Sakura bit her lip and nodded.

Silence echoed loudly from both ends of the phone, when finally Syaoran broke it.

**Sakura, he can't see you nodding.**

"Oh, right, um… so I should just watch and wait to see what happens?"

Eriol gave a sigh of frustration.

'I wish I could give to more, but I'm sorry but I can't. I'll look into things here and get back to you are soon as I can. But Sakura, I think that you need to be very careful, things, the magic balance is beginning to move again.'

"Oh and that's bad?"

'No, the balance moving isn't supposed to be a bad thing, the world needs change but, not when evil is making the balance move in their favour.'

"Oh great." Sakura sighed heavily, "Thanks Eriol-kun, hope things are alright over there. Say hello to Mizuki-sensei for me please."

'_Things are fine and I will pass Kaho your message, she out at conference at the moment. She's thinking of returning to Japan soon, she misses it and the people there.'_ He hinted. His hint was not picked up on by Sakura, but both Syaoran and Kero understood the meaning of it.

"Bye, Eriol, thanks again for all your help." Eriol laughed sadly at this.

'_I don't know if I was much help to you. But be safe Sakura and say hello to Tomoyo and everyone there for me."_

"Will do." To which she was promising to no one knew, probably the latter since being safe for any length of time for Sakura was a job in itself when magic was about.

With another quick goodbye they both hung up. Sakura continued to sit on the floor, chewing her lip. Then she started dialling again.

"Who are you calling now?" Kero asked. Sakura gave him a warning look, and nodded at Syaoran, who was sulking. However, his sulking gave away to curiosity and suspicion, when he saw Sakura was holding the cordless phone to her ear and intently looking at the opposite wall.

_**Who… are… you… calling… NOW?**_ Syaoran demanded, stretching his sentence slowly so that she could clearly understand that he was so not happy.

Sakura just ignored him.

'_Hello.' _A depressed voice answer after the phone rang several times. Sakura was so glad she could understand Chinese.

"Hi, it's me, Sakura." Sakura said gently.

'_Sakura, what… what are you calling for? Syaoran's…ah, not here.'_ The female Chinese voice said panicking.

"Yes, I know."

'_How do you know that?'_

"Cause he's currently sitting next to me." Sakura explained calmly. Syaoran was glaring evils at her, but she ignored him. She was getting quite good at it, too.

She winced at the shriek that echoed down the phone line. Holding the phone at arms length as the shriek continued.

_**You called Meilin?**_ Syaoran bellowed in fury, barking madly, desperate to yell at her with an actual voice.

At the sounds of barking, Meilin stop shrieking.

'_Sakura-chan, when did you get a dog?'_ she asked much too calmly for someone who had just been shrieking her lungs out just a moment before. Sakura sweat-dropped.

"Um, well you see I only just acquired him yesterday." She admitted, ignoring Syaoran's furious voice demanding, _**ACQUIRED?**_

"Ok, I take that back, he's not my dog."

_**I'm your dog, I'm your dog!**_ He begged.

"the barking and frantic panting, is actually… no that sounds so wrong, but you see Syaoran's somehow got turn into a" _**Don't say it**_, Syaoran growled. Sakura sighed. "a wolf!"

_**SAKURA!**_

There was silence at the other end of the line for a couple of moments before Meilin spoke.

'_So Syaoran's a wolf?'_

"Yup."

'_Is he ok?'_

"Well at the moment he's glaring daggers at me so I clarifying that as ok. Well physically he looks a little different, but trust me mentally he just the same as always." Sakura sighed. Meilin giggled loudly.

_**HEY!**_

"Quit yelling at me!" she snapped at him, "You're giving me a headache."

'_Umm, Sakura-chan, I'm not yelling.'_ Meilin defended.

"No not you, Syaoran. It's a mental thing. Since he's a wolf he can't talk, he can bark and howl and carry on, but no human speech. I am one of the lucky few who can actually hear his thoughts."

'_Oh, really?'_

"Yep! And we're hating every moment of it."

'_You ok?'_

"I'm… well I have a huge headache and my side hurts." Sakura quickly brought Meilin up to date with everything they knew and what had happen so far.

'_So even Eriol-kun can't turn him back.'_ Meilin whispered fearfully. Syaoran whined unhappily and stared at Sakura imploringly.

"Syaoran says he's fine and not to worry yourself about him."

'_He's a freaking wolf!'_ Meilin shrieked into the phone, making them all jump.

"Yeah, we kinda notice." Kero said sarcastically.

'_**Shut up, stuffed animal!'**_ both cousins bellowed. Sakura cringed at the noise.

"Ok, ouch, loud!"

'_Sorry.'_ Meilin said apologetically.

_**Sorry**_

"It's ok. So any ideas how Syaoran got turn into a wolf?"

'_None, but magic isn't really my thing, is it.'_ Syaoran and Sakura groaned.

"Meilin."

'_Sorry, sorry, I'm still a bit touchy about the whole not having magic thing, but I'll look around quietly and see what I can find out, ok?'_

"Cool, thank you so much Meilin-chan." Sakura said sincerely.

'_It's ok; don't go all silly about it.'_ Meilin grumbled in embarrassment.

Sakura thought for a moment.

"Should you tell your family where he is and what happen to him?" Sakura asked.

'_NO!'_

Sakura jumped a little as once again her head registered too much noise going on around her.

"Why?"

'_Cause that the way it is, if one of the family goes on a mission, they can't come back until they__'ve complete it. They can't ask for help anywhere threw it, they have to do it alone and if they do contact the family it has to be really important.'_ Meilin explained.

"That's stupid; we live in the twenty-first century!"

'_I know its stupid, but our family has a hard time moving on and letting go of traditions.'_

"Brilliant." Sakura grumbled sarcastically.

"So am I breaking the scared tradition by calling you and telling you want happen to Syaoran?"

'_No, not really, I'm not important enough for them to think anyone would bother to call me and tell me what's going on, but I'm not going to go out and brag__ging about it. Anyway, its you who's calling, not Syaoran and they already don't like you and think you're nosy, but they can't touch you because of the Cards, so your fine.'_

"okey-dokey."

'_I have to go, I've been on the phone awhile and my Mom is going to kill me with how much I'm on the phone these days.'_ Sakura could hear embarrassed, shyness in her friend's voice.

"Oh really, I demand details." Meilin laughed.

'Ok, ok, next time I call I'll give you full blown details.'

_**What are you two on about?**_ Syaoran demanded frustrated. Sakura just grinned at him knowingly

"Mind your own business." Sakura told him giving him a playful shove.

_**Meilin is my business!**_

"Bye." Sakura said into the phone, ignoring Syaoran.

'_See ya.'_

Still smiling Sakura hung up for she knew something Syaoran clearly didn't and was quite happy not to tell him, for one thing she wasn't sure how he'd react to the news of finding out his ex-fiancé was dating another man. She was a little ashamed of herself that she was actually happy that Meilin had found someone else, not that she wasn't happy that Meilin had, she was very, very happy for her, it was just that… her eyes strayed over to where Syaoran was crouched, pouting because he was being left out of the loop.

"Alright," she said, breaking the silences that had befallen on them since the end of the phone call, "Pancake time!"

She bounced awkwardly to her feet and immediately wished she hadn't, but tried not to let the pain she felt show on her face too much or in the way she walked to the kitchen. The kitchen now looked like a mighty foe!

* * *

**Author's Note:** Well this was once again a long chapter, not as interesting as the last. No killing Bounty Hunters! But still I hope you enjoyed and will please review.

See you next time.


	3. To Quarrel and Dream

**Author's Note:** This is a bit of a slow Chapter, but needs to be here or things just won't make sense.

**_Syaoran talking._**  
_Thinking.  
'Other person on the phone'  
_**Sayuki talking in dream**

* * *

**Chapter 3**

**To Quarrel and Dream**

Syaoran sat by Sakura legs as she cooked at the stove. The smell of pancakes flooded the homely kitchen. She moved awkwardly to grab three plates from one of the wall cupboards.

"Don't tell my Father or my brother that I'm letting you eat off the plate, ok." Sakura teased.

**_Shut up!_**

"Sorry, here." She placed one of the plates down in front of him, stacked with seven pancakes. Syaoran stared at the plate before looking up at Sakura, raising his eyebrows.

"What?" Sakura demanded defensively, "You're a growing boy!"

**_Ye-ah, so you want to fatten me up?_**

"Now you shut up."

**_Not my fault that you want to fatten me up and cook me… you don't want to cook me, right?_**

"If I wanted to cook you, it would be now before you ate the food I cooked_ for_ you." Sakura growled. Syaoran smiled a wolfy grin up at her. She sighed.

"You know, I think you're more of a pain then when you were when we were ten." Sakura grumbled, sliding down to the floor beside him.

**_I'm not glaring at you anymore!_**

"Well not as much as you use too, but you're defiantly getting better." Sakura assured him.

_**Thanks.**_ He replied sarcastically. She grinned.

"You're very welcome."

"You two aren't fighting again, are you?" Kero asked cautiously as he flew into the kitchen.

"No, we're not fighting." Sakura assured him, nodding her head to the counter where his plate of pancakes were cooling.

"Yummy, thanks Sakura-chan." Kero squealed, grabbing his plate and zooming out of the kitchen again.

**_Where's he going?_**

"Video games." Sakura replied calmly as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. However it was not the most obvious thing to Syaoran, who stared at her blankly.

**_Huh?_**

"You know Kero's addicted to video games. If we aren't chasing after Cards or there isn't any food about or even if there is he'll being playing. A word of advice, if you want him to do something for you, threaten either the play-station or his video games, he'll do anything for you."

**_So, what you're actually saying is that he will die without his silly games?_**

Sakura let out a giggle.

"Yeah, something like that."

**_The Stuffed Animal needs to get a life!_**

"I know, but what can you do." She sniggered, pulling apart a bit of pancake and putting it into her mouth.

_**Kick him out of the house and make him get a life.**_ Syaoran suggested, before returning to trying to chew his pancakes.

"You ok?" Sakura asked. Syaoran glared up at her.

"I'm sure you'll get use to this." Sakura mumbled. Syaoran merely grunted, not looking at her. Sakura shifted uncomfortably were she sat. She was saved from her awkwardness by the phone ringing loudly from the lounge room.

Syaoran didn't look up until Sakura's back was to him and only then did he get up and follow her.

"Hello, Kinomoto residence. Kinomoto Sakura, speaking." Sakura greeted as she answered the cordless phone.

'_Sakura-chan, are you ok?'_ Sakura froze at the sound of the male voice on the other end of the phone. She tucked her hair away from her face, pushing some behind her ear. Her fingers moved down to her hairs ends.

"What's going on?" Kero asked, flying downstairs. Syaoran shoot him a warning look.

"Len-kun, what, eh, what are you calling for." Sakura gabbled. Syaoran stared at her questioning as her began to tug at her hair.

"Oh." Kero muttered with understanding. Syaoran head flicked for a moment in his direction.

"Ichijo Len, class 2-2 along with Sakura-chan and Tomoyo-chan. Apparently he's very smart, very rich and well known family and an all round nice guy and all the girls want to go out with him." Syaoran raised an eyebrow.

"Except he won't go out with any of the girls at school, because the one he wants to go out with feels obligated to someone else." Kero shot Syaoran a suggesting look, which he didn't get.

"Oh god, you're almost as thick as Sakura. The boy likes her and would ask her out if Sakura wasn't so clueless and maybe if she wasn't so hung up over you."

Syaoran scowled, but turned his attention back to Sakura, who was pulling her hair even more profoundly.

"Um, I'm sick with a bug." Sakura made up lamely.

'_Oh, well I hope you get better soon, I mean schools so strange without your smiling face.'_ Sakura mouth dropped. She pressed a hand to her mouth to muffle the sound of her gasping breathing. Syaoran stared at her in disbelief.

**_Not again!_**

"Either I'm going and insane and hearing things, such as your bratty voice or I just heard your bratty voice say 'not again!'?" Kero said.

**_Shut UP, Stuffed Animal_.**

"Oh no, I am hearing you. The end is coming." Kero wailed.

_'What was that wailing sound?'_

"Ah?" Sakura glanced over a Kero, making a hand movement across her neck at him. "It's the TV. I'm watching this really dull horror movie, with a Werewolf in it, which attacks this bewitched stuff animal, cause they just don't get along."

_'Wow, it doesn't sound so bad, but I've never heard of it before. Is American or something?'_

"Ah, it must be, it's in English and I'm not getting it."

_'But your really good at understanding English.''_

"I'm having a rough today with my English. Anyway, thanks for um, calling Ichijo-kun…"

_'Len, Sakura-chan, I told you, you could call me Len.'_

"Ok." Sakura squeaked.

_'Well, bye, I hope you get better soon Sakura-chan. I don't know how long I'll last without seeing your smiling face at school.'_

At this Syaoran started to bark, loudly.

"Yeah, bye." Sakura said hastily and hung up.

"What was that about?" she demanded swing around to face a glaring Syaoran.

**_Well, I'm sorry for breaking up you phone call with you boyfriend, but someone's just arrived._**

"He's not my BOYFRIEND!" Sakura shrieked, storming for the hall, before stopping, turning around and walking right back up to him.

"Who's just arrived?"

**_How the heck should I know?_**

"Jerk!" Sakura muttered as she turned once again to the hall.

**_What was that?_**

"I said 'jerk'" Sakura growled, stalking down the hall.

**_I am once again sooo sorry for messing up you phone call to your boyfriend, I just thought we had more pressing issues than talking to cute boys!_**

"Screw you; it wasn't like that at all." She snapped, peering out the side window beside the front door.

**_Looked like it to me._**

"Oh and you would know would you… Oh crap!"

_**Well actually I would, since I have….**_ Syaoran started but stopped finally registering what Sakura had added to her sentence. _**What?**_

"My brother! And Yukito-kun, but all the same oh crap!" Sakura muttered starting to panic a little.

**_You can fight Demons and rogue Cards quite happily, but you're terrified of your Brother?_**

"You're scared of your Mother, Sisters and Meilin, what you excuse?" Sakura retorted angrily. "Plus, who wouldn't be scared of my Brother? How is he and Yukito-kun friends?" she muttered to herself.

The door open and everyone froze.

"Sakura what are you doing here?" her Brother, Kinomoto Touya demanded. Just as Syaoran remember, Touya was still as imposing as ever.

"Um, well you see…um." Sakura babbled.

"And what's with the dog-wolf thing doing in the house." Touya demanded, spotting Syaoran, who was glaring up at him off to the side. Yukito smiled weakly at Sakura, mouthing "I tried to keep him away, but the school called". Sakura's shoulder slumped.

"Well, Sakura?"

"He's a new pet?" Sakura said smiling up at her brother innocently. Her brother wasn't buying it. But he just sighed.

"If you're sick you should be in bed, I'll be up in a bit with some food, ok."

"What about your work?" Sakura asked.

"It's a slow day and I haven't been off for awhile, so." He shrugged.

"Lunch break." Yukito added for himself.

"Oh ok." Sakura mumbled and walked up stairs, Kero hiding in her hair and Syaoran following close to her heels.

"Sakura." Touya said suddenly when she was half way up the stairs. She spun around, almost falling, startled.

"Yes onii-chan?"

"Keep the mutt off your bed." He ordered and walked away with Yukito, who discretely gave her the thumbs up.

Sakura flopped on to her bed, snuggling into her covers.

"Well, looks like you're staying." She happily informed Syaoran who stared at her in disbelief.

**_I don't get girls mood changes_.**

"Good, but they are a thing to be feared." Sakura giggled.

**_I well belief that._**

"I'm so happy, my brother not mad at me for missing school or for having a strange dog in the house. This is great!"

"SAKURA NADESHIKO KINOMOTO, why are there plates of pancakes on the FLOOR?" Sakura cringed at her brother powerful voice, shaking the house at its foundations.

"Ooops, I forgot." She whispered, grapping her pillow and pulling it up and over her head.

Syaoran curled up into a ball beside her bed, his amber eyes watching the twitching hands on top of the pillow.

* * *

Sakura walked threw darkness. She wasn't sure where she was, but she knew it was dark and darkness weigh heavily down upon her as she walked threw it, trying to find away out. Trying to find some sort of light to guide her threw it.

The more she walked, the more worn down she felt, until she saw two small, amber gold lights just a little in front of her. They glinted at her, moving up and down as if taking her in. they moved together, not apart, moving as one.

_**Sakura**_**.** The amber gold lights seemed to be calling to her, beckoning her to follow as they began to move away. As they moved they gradually disappeared, which struck panic within her as she broke into a run to find them again.

Wait! She yelled in panic. She felt something soft and furry and warm brushed against her leg making her squeal in shock.

_**Don't scream.**_ The lights suddenly appeared where the furry thing against her leg was. She frowned she knew that voice. She knew that voice very well.

Syaoran? The lights moved up and down as if nodding, but then moved side to side as if disagreeing.

What's that suppose to mean?

_**Just follow.**_

Wow you're just as bossy in my dreams as you are in real life. She grumbled as she followed him threw the darkness. Well she followed him by him pressing against her leg guiding where she was suppose to go.

**Welcome.** Two huge globes of light appeared in front of them, almost blinding Sakura with their brilliance.

Who are you? Sakura stammered, trying to see threw her eyelashes up at the brilliant lights.

**Syaoran knows who I am.**

Oh yeah and he is so going to tell me. Sakura snapped. The huge lights chuckled.

**My name is Dragon. Ask Syaoran for my pronunciation.**

I don't understand.

**And your not suppose to.**

Why?

**Because I am merely here to help you put together the pieces you already know. With more pieces the more you know.**

But I don't know you?

**True, but you know Syaoran.**

You're the one who cursed him aren't you?

**For his own good and protection.**

Are you real?

**Yes, I am. But the only way we can communicate is threw our dreams.**

But you're the bad guy. Why do you want to talk to me?

**Not everything is black and white! There are such things as grey.**

Okey-dokey then, explain please.

**Something's are not always as they seem.**

What do you mean?

**Ask him! Ask him to tell you.**

But he won't… Sakura started to yell when she suddenly felt as if she was falling. Why the heck was she falling.

_**Idiot!**_ She heard Syaoran sigh and then she hit something soft and furry, which let out a yelp with her squeal.

"What's going on?" Kero asked groggily flying out of his drawer to figure out what was going on with his mistress and the brat.

"Ow." Sakura groaned, struggling to get off poor Syaoran who had been happily sleeping soundly beside her bed.

_**Ow, is an understatement.**_ Syaoran grumbled loudly.

"You fell out of bed again, didn't you?" Kero sighed as he watched his mistress and the wolf brat struggle to get untangled from bed sheet and blanket and each other.

"I had a weird dream." Sakura grumbled, finally straightening herself and climbing back into her bed. Thinking of her dream suddenly reminded her.

"Syaoran, what's a dragon's name?" she asked innocently.

Without thinking, Syaoran replied,_** well my uncle name is Sayuki and that means dragon.**_ Then Syaoran froze. He glared at Sakura, who smiled innocently back.

"I said I had a weird dream." She pointed out. He growled at her angrily though he was madder at himself.

"So you got changed into a wolf by your uncle whose name is Sayuki which means dragon, right?" Sakura asked, thinking deeply. Syaoran just grunted.

"That still doesn't make sense." She mumbled to herself.

_**What doesn't make sense?**_

"He, your uncle, said what he did to you was for your own good and protection. Why would he say that?"

"Cause he's a lying bastard with nothing better to do then to make you all confused." Kero said smartly.

Sakura frown.

"Things just aren't adding up here. I feel like I'm just touching the answer but it keeps slipping away just when I'm about to grasp its full, true meaning." Sakura sighed.

_**Just forget about Sakura, it doesn't matter.**_ Syaoran grumbled and stalked over to where his made up bed was. Sakura seeing the bed frown in confusion.

"That's different, the bed, I mean. I don't remember it being like that."

"Oh, Tomoyo-chan came while you were asleep and set up a whole new bed for the brat. Your brother thought it was a waste of time and effort." Kero explained quietly as they watched Syaoran sulk on the fully cushion, raised of the floor mattress bed.

"wow." Was all Sakura could think to say on the matter.

"He's a bit big for it though." Kero pointed out loudly to Sakura. Syaoran growled at him.

"Oh right, Eriol-kun said that to help Syaoran blend in here I should shrink him." Sakura said. Syaoran grumbled at her unhappily, but got off his bed and pattered over to her.

"Ok." She summed her Star staff and called upon The Small card to shrink Syaoran to a normal medium dog size.

"Don't you think your Bro will notice the sudden reduction in size?" Kero asked.

"No, he only saw Syaoran for a moment, and besides he's not around that much anyway, so no problem really." Sakura shrugged as she put her staff and cards away.

Syaoran wandered over to Sakura mirror, which went from the floor to normal human height and peered at himself. He didn't look any different besides smaller, but apart from that he was completely the same.

"I don't think I'll go to school today." Sakura mused when she saw the time on her clock. 11:30am! Hmmm, yeah, no school!

"Is my brother still around or did he leave?" Sakura asked, walking cautiously down stairs with Syaoran at her heels and Kero on her shoulder.

"He stayed all night, but left this morning." Kero said

"Oh, ok." Sakura mumbled absently, getting some breakfast together.

"Syaoran?" Sakura asked once they had all returned to her room, with another patch of pancakes.

_**Hmmm?**_

"since your uncle turned you into a wolf, could he turn you back into a human? I mean, if we found him and forced him, he could take the spell off right?"

Sakura stared at Syaoran, waiting. For awhile Syaoran didn't say anything, but finally he said. _**It's a possibility, but I don't want you involved when I find him.**_

Sakura fumed for a moment.

"Why not, I can help."

_**It doesn't matter whether you can help or not! What matters is that I beat him by myself and bring him back to the Clan, dead or alive.**_

"So this really is about family pride, is it?" Sakura snapped. "You don't want my help because it'll look weak in your Clan's eyes, is that it."

Syaoran growled deep in his throat.

_**No, I don't want your help because I don't need it. Why would I need the help from the likes of you?**_ He snarled back. Sakura flinched at his tone as much as from his words. Was that really how he felt about her? Someone useless and always in the way.

Syaoran regretted his words, he hadn't meant them. He started to try and apologize when Sakura suddenly yelled.

"Then why the hell did you come here then?" she yelled at him, her eyes were stinging with unwanted tears. The three fell silent.

_**I don't know why I came here. I don't even know how I got here.**_ Syaoran admitted softly. Sakura chewed her lip. She was still hurt from what he had said, but at this moment he looked so lost and pathetic, she couldn't stay mad at him.

"Well you're here now and you're stuck here, because I'm not letting you go out on your own. So whether you liked it or not, you're going to have my help." Sakura sighed.

_**Sakura!**_ Syaoran started to argue but Sakura interrupted him.

"Well on the bright side, at least you're calling me by my name." she mused, smiling rather happily.

Syaoran was left speechless, before turning away to hide his smile.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Ok. Now I got Syaoran uncle names from a friend who swears that it means dragon, if it doesn't and I've made an idiot of myself, please tell me so that i can kick my friends sorry ass.  
Anyway, things will move on in the next chapter I swear.


	4. Back In The Game

**Author's Note:** Sorry i have written much to this for awhile, come to think i haven't written _ANYTHING_ much in awhile! So once again sorry.  
I've been really busy with Exams and Assignments and it'll probably be awhile again for to update, since i have year 11 finals in a couple of weeks, so please be patient, I'm doing the best I can.  
Sorry this is so short also, the next chapter is longer I swear.  
I hope you enjoy.

* * *

**Chapter 4**

**Back In the Game**

"Sakura-chan! Your back! How are you feeling?"

Sakura's face went slightly red as her friends jumped up from their sits to greet her as she walked into her homeroom.

"I feel much better, thanks." Sakura said, embarrassed by the attention she was getting.

"No, need to be embarrassed, Sakura-chan, we were all very worried about you." Sakura jumped at the sound of Ichijo Len voice behind her.

"Hoe!! Oh, Good morning Ichijo-kun… Oh wait, I mean Len-kun." Sakura stammered, sweat dropping heavily. Ichijo Len just smiled kindly at her.

Ichijo Len was a tall boy with thick, unruly gold hair with amazing silvery blue eyes. He was a transfer student from America though he admitted he was born in England, hence the English accent when he spoke Japanese.

All the girls where quite taken to him, not just because he was very gentlemanly with them at all times, the girls felt as if he was one of the few boys who'd never make fun of them if they confessed their love to him. Though he had never said yes to any of them, they couldn't help but still like him, for he had rejected them kindly and never told anyone what they had said to him. The girls felt that in his own way he stood up for them and was always willing to help them.

Sakura back at him sheepishly. He was so different from Syaoran, so much kinder and gentle, yet… she stared at him almost sadly before quickly looking away. He was different from Syaoran, yet in away they where both the same. Unreachable and untouchable. She walked to her seat by the window.

"What is it Sakura-chan." Tomoyo-chan asked her friend softly.

"Nothing, really." Sakura whispered back.

"Did you and Syaoran fight again?"

"Sort of, but we kinda got over it." Sakura admitted.

"Well that's not bad." Tomoyo said. Sakura shrugged.

"Sometimes, I wonder…" Sakura started but the bell went for their first class. _Maths, yuck!_ Sakura thought

* * *

"Hey, look at that funny looking dog. It looks like a wolf." Sakura head whipped around to the direction that Chiharu was pointing in. It was lunch break and Sakura and her friends where sitting out in the school grounds under the brown and golden trees.

"Syaoran!" Sakura yelped in shock. The wolf like dog stared at her, a sheepish look about as it moved slowly towards her from where he had been curled up under a tree.

"Syaoran? Is that your dog, Sakura-chan?" Naoko asked smiling slyly at her friend who went a little red in the face.

"You named your dog, Syaoran?" Takashi asked laughing in amusement.

"Yeah, I named him that because well um, he um looks like a wolf and he's a little wolf, Syaoran." Sakura explained lamely.

_**That is the lamest excuse in the world.**_ Syaoran snorted as he came to sit beside her in the small group of friends.

"Oh he's such a sweet dog." Chiharu squealed, reaching over to scratch Syaoran's furry head.

"Yeah, he can be pretty sweet when he wants too, aren't you Syao." Sakura teased, giving Syaoran's other ear a gentle tug. Syaoran glared at her and she just smiled at him sweetly.

"But what's he doing here?" Rika asked softly.

"He probably just wanted a walk and smelt me here so came here too." Sakura said. Rika nodded.

"He looks like a wolf, are you sure he's not dangerous?" Len asked suddenly. He had been very quiet upon Syaoran's arrival. Syaoran glared at the strange looking boy who could not be Japanese, his accent reminding Syaoran of Eriol's accent.

"Oh, well yeah, but he's not dangerous." Sakura defended softly. Len smiled at her.

"I'm sorry, Sakura-chan, its just I don't think your dog likes me much and I was just a little worried about him attacking us that's all." Len soothed her. Sakura nodded, but Syaoran continued to glare at the boy. He had seen Sakura's blush when she looked at this foreign blonde haired boy with blue eyes. Boy returned his stare calmly.

"Interesting dog." He said calmly.

"Thanks." Sakura said, moving her hand to the scruff of Syaoran's neck to stop him from lunging at Len.

"I think its time for class." Len said looking at his watch. With loud sighs the group got up, scratching Syaoran's head in turn.

"Stay here." Sakura ordered him softly.

_**Oh fun!**_

"You betcha! Stay!" and with that she walked away towards her school building. Syaoran watched the blonde hair boy fall in step with Sakura. He felt a growl build up within his chest as he glared at the blonde boy's back.

_**Great, another Eriol!**_ Syaoran thought as he went and lay back down under a tree. He watched Sakura and the blonde boy disappear into the building. There was something about the boy. Syaoran could sense magic from the boy, but what sort of magic the boy had and how strong it was, Syaoran didn't know. He also didn't know if the boy was an enemy of them and that bugged the hell out of him.

* * *

"Why did you come today?" Sakura asked, as she and Syaoran walked home together.

_**Just checking on you.**_ He said without looking at her. Sakura glanced down at him, startled by his sincereness.

"Thanks." She mumbled softly. Syaoran snorted, but it was in a gentle manor.

_**Don't mention it.**_ Sakura smiled slightly. Her smile however faulted as a terrible smell met her nose.

"Oh no, not again." Sakura bit her lip. Syaoran growled by her legs.

They both cringed when they heard a snarl behind them. They slowly turned around. A huge troll stood there, grinning at them stupidly, very much like the one that they had faced earlier that week. Sakura screamed as the troll swung his huge club at her. She and Syaoran turned and ran down the street they had been walking down.

_**We need to lead it away from people. Normal people can't see it but they can still be hurt by it.**_ Syaoran explained quickly as they ran threw King Penguin Park to the remote part of the park were they had fought the first troll.

_**Do you have your cards with you?**_ Syaoran asked as they finally skidded to a stop in a clearing of trees.

"Yeah, I do." She pulled out her cards from her bag and released her staff.

"Ok, what now? What do I use against trolls?" she asked as she listened to the heavy footsteps of the troll growing louder as he drew closer.

_**Trolls hate spice.**_

"Oh, helpful! They couldn't not like sugar could they?"

_**No.**_

"Ok, what else?"

_**You don't have anything to turn it into stone**__**, do you?**_ Syaoran asked hopefully.

"No, I don't. You know what cards I have." Sakura whispered in a panic.

_**Hmmm, the Earthy, maybe… no.**_

"What about turning it to ice?"

_**I-I… maybe.**_

"Ok, whatever we don't have time to figure out whether it will work or not. Trial and error, right?"

The troll walked into the clearing grinning stupidly at them, raising its huge club above its head.

"Syaoran?"

_**Just do it!**_

"Icy! Seal this troll into a block of ice." Sakura yelled, swirling her staff around her head. Icy flew out of the from her staffs tip, hurtling towards the Troll. The Troll hissed at the spirit of ice, swing it club at the ice spirit as it wrapped itself around the Trolls legs, turning them to ice. Sakura and Syaoran watched as the Troll and spirit struggled. Finally the ice spirit finished its job and the Troll was completely covered with ice.

"Thanks Icy." Sakura mumbled as the spirit returned to its card form.

"How do we get rid of it?" Sakura asked staring at the ugly ice sculpture.

_**Shatter it might be a good option.**_

"How would a Li get rid of a Troll?"

_**Exorcism.**_

"Ok, how do you do that?" Sakura asked, eyeing the ice sculpture. She could have sworn the eyes of the Troll had moved.

_**None that you can use without years of practise… plus we have none of what we'd need for a Li exorcism.**_

"Great, so what can we do, apart from shatter the thing?"

_**Still thinking on that part.**_

"Well, hurry up."

_**They-they hate light!**_

"But it is in light, the sun! You know the bright big round thing in the sky!" Sakura argued.

_**They hate bright light, pure light. The light from the sun isn't as pure as it once was because of the Ozone layer.**_

"Great, so we need a huge, bright light blub!" Sakura complain sarcastically. Then her eyes went bright.

"Light!"

_**Yeah, I just said that!**_

"No, no, no, light! I mean The Light card!

_**Oh right!**_

"Light! Shine pureness upon this evil being!" Sakura commanded. The Light card smiled and nodded and let forth a brilliant shine of pure light that hit the frozen Troll. The ice that had entrapped it melted letting the glowing light in the Troll fully in the face. The Troll screeched in terror and pain as the light burned its face. As more light shown upon it the more its foil skin burned horribly, until finally all that was left of it was a foil smelling mess of ash.

"Why are these things now coming after me? I've had the cards in my precision for years. Why now?"

_**I don't know, but I'm sure in time we'll find out in time. Come on lets go home.**_

"Ok." Sakura mumbled and the two walked away from the smelly ash pile.

* * *

"Kero, we got attacked by a Troll today."

"What, another one?" Kero asked, looking away from his video game to stare at the two. They both nodded.

"Why are they after to me now?" Sakura asked flopping onto her bed wearily.

_**Someone must have hired them to come after to you.**_ Syaoran mumbled.

"But who?"

The three just stared at each other without an answer.

_**Maybe you should call Yue for help.**_ Syaoran advised her gently.

Sakura shook her head. "No, I can't. Things are just getting settled with Yukito and my brother, I couldn't ask for his help."

"Well if you're sure." Kero sighed heavily. Sakura nodded. "Yeah, I am. Don't worry about."

_**But that's the thing, Sakura; this is something to worry about. Once the person whose in charge of the bounty realise that the first Bounty Hunters have failed to achieve the cards, that person will hire stronger Bounty Hunters, who are hard to defeat.**_

"Ok." Sakura squeaked nervously. "So we conquer that problem when we get there."

_**When we get there.**_

"Yeah, we need to get you human again first." Sakura whispered reaching out and gently stroked his ears.

"We'll get you human again I promise."

_**I hope so.**_

* * *

The sky was very dark when Sayuki looked up at it. Tonight was the New Moon, two weeks after he had changed Syaoran into a wolf. He had been out in the cool night walking. He stopped just outside the card mistress house, smiling knowingly. Wasn't she going to be in a shock in a couple of minutes?

Lucky none of her family were home to hear her scream. He walked down the street, still smiling.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Ok, so Sakura's Friends make an appearence, as does two of my new characters Ichijo Len and Li Sayuki, even though they are mention in other chapters and Sayuki does appear in chapter one, anyway he appears again and you finally see what Len Ichijo is like. Just Random Note: Len Father is japanese, hence the last name but his mother is english and he takes his appearence mostly from her.

See you next chapter.


	5. New Moon

**Author's Note:** Hey. Yeah I know I said the next update for this might take awhile, but I actually had this one almost completed, so 'shrug'.

I'm sort of depressed by how few reviews I've gotten for this, though thank you so much to those who have reviewed, there really nice and made me really want to keep writing this.  
Sorry for being depressed, I'm not writing this for reviews, this was at first just meant to be a fun little project to do when I am having writers bloke with my other stories, but then my best mate read it and said I should put it, so i have and i think that with this story I can see my improvement with my grammar and punctuation better then with my other stories so i guess I'm a bit down that no one who usually pokes me about my grammar and such haven't meantion anything. So yeah, sorry, I had a very bad week at school, too many fights, a lot of verbal abuse and a physical fight yesterday that involved one of my friends, who is being blamed for it when he did nothing but walk away and he was on the one who was hurt. I think it might have something to do with the fact that he's Gay. Stupid people.  
Sorry, I'll shut up now.  
Please read and enjoy.

* * *

**Chapter 5**

**New Moon**

Syaoran stretched out on his bed. He was now completely use to being a wolf, since he had been walking around as one for the passed two weeks.

He rolled his eyes as he heard Kero cheer from the television. He had obviously won another level of the stupid video game he was playing. Sakura had gone to have a shower, so he was bored with no one to talk to.

He twitched uncomfortably on his bed.

He suddenly felt sore in every joint of his body. The feeling reminded him of when he had been changing into a wolf, though this wasn't quite as bad as that experience had been.

"Brat, are you all right?" Kero turned from the television when he heard several groans of pain coming from Syaoran's direction.

"Brat?"

Syaoran's whole body was engulfed in bright red light, so bright that Kero had to cover his eyes.

"Sakura! You need to come here! NOW!" Kero ordered. Sakura flew into her bedroom, her wet hair flying wildly behind her as ran, her pyjamas disarray.

"Syaoran! Oh my god, are you alright." Sakura gasped, trying to move to Syaoran's side but was unable to because of the red barrier that surrounded him.

"Syaoran!" a final yell of pain came from with the red light before there was silence.

"Syaoran?" the red light faded and revealed, not a wolf dog, but a naked, shaking boy with unruly chestnut brown hair.

Without thinking about being embarrassed about the whole situation, Sakura ran from her room to the linen closet downstairs, grabbing as many blankets she could carry from it.

She ran back up to her room, throwing most of the blankets onto her floor while still holding the biggest, thickest blanket and threw it over Syaoran's shaking form.

She crouched down beside him, wrapping the blanket securely around him, before grabbing two more and wrapping them around him too.

"Sakura?" Syaoran asked threw chattering teeth. His eyes were squeezed shut in pain.

"Yeah, I'm here." She whispered and wrapped her arms around him.

"Kero?" she looked up at her Guardian, begging for guidance.

"I'll call Eriol." Kero said, for this was the only useful thing he could think of to do.

"Ok." Sakura nodded, keeping her arms tightly around Syaoran.

Kero flew downstairs at top speed. He went so fast he almost missed the phone and crash into the opposite wall.

He, however, managed to catch himself before he crashed. He flew back to the phone, picking him up and dialling Eriol's number.

'_Hello?'_

"Eriol, its Cerberus."

'_Cerberus?'_

"Syaoran has turned human again."

'_What?! When?'_

"Just now!"

'_How curious.'_ Eriol mumbled. Curiosity and fascination were rich in his voice.

"Yeah, so why did this happen?" Kero asked, trying to keep the reincarnation of his previous Master on track.

'_Because of the spell that was cast upon him. The spell was meant for him to be a wolf except for two nights, the New Moon and the Full Moon. The spell's powers wane on these two nights.'_ Eriol explained.

"Why?"

'_Because that was how the caster wished for it to be.'_

"But why?"

'_I'm not all together sure. Do you know who changed him yet?'_

"Yes! Yes, we do. It was his uncle, his uncle Sayuki!"

'_Brilliant! I'll see what can find.'_

"So what's going to happen? Is he going to turn back into a wolf when morning comes?"

'_Most likely yes.'_

"Ok, call back when you find something." Kero sighed heavily

'_I will. Keep them safe, Cerberus.'_ And with that Eriol hung up.

"Well that was helpful." Kero groaned heavily. He floated unhappily back upstairs to Sakura's room.

"Kero? What did you find out?" Kero sighed at his Mistresses question. Both his Mistress and the Brat were both looking at him expectantly.

"Eriol thinks that this is how the spell is supposed to work. He thinks that the spell's powers wane tonight of the New Moon and on the night of the Full Moon. And Eriol thinks that exactly how the person, Sayuki, wanted it to be."

"But why?" Sakura asked, staring from Kero to Syaoran, who was now far more alert then before but was still leaning heavily against her form.

"I asked Eriol the same thing; he's not quite sure himself."

"Did you tell him that my uncle was behind this?" both guardian and Mistress jumped at the croaking sound of Syaoran's voice.

Kero looked into Syaoran's intense amber eyes and nodded.

"And what did the four-eyed freak think of that?" Syaoran croaked. It felt so strange to use his vocal cords for talking again. Actually every part of his body felt strange, even his big toe.

"I don't know, but he seemed interested." Kero admitted. Syaoran rolled his eyes and revolved his neck, creaking it to loosen up the muscles there.

"How long do I have until I turn wolf again?" Syaoran asked.

"Morning." Kero said seriously. Syaoran just nodded.

"Ok, well at least I get to turn back into human at least twice a mouth." Syaoran grumbled to himself.

"I'm going to go get you some on Onii-chan old clothes; you look like you're about the same height as him and similar build." Sakura commented, getting up gently, for Syaoran was still leaning heavily against her. She gently helped him to lean against her desk before walking out of her room.

Moments later she walked back in with pile of clothes. Kero eyed the pile of clothes in Sakura's arms with amusement. The clothes Sakura had picked for Syaoran where probably some of her brother's best clothes. He sniggered at the thought Touya coming home and finding the Brat dressed in some of his favourite clothes.

"I'm going to go make you some food, ok. Kero, you stay here and help him if he needs it, ok." Sakura sent her Guardian a warning look as Kero started to protest.

"I feel like such a weak idiot." Syaoran grumbled as his struggled to a louse shirt over his head. His arms felt so stiff and unwilling to move in the ways they had been design to move in.

"You look like one too." Cerberus commented. Syaoran glared at the big, winged, golden lion that he was leaning against since he's legs were still having trouble supporting him.

"But you know, considering, your doing fairly well." Cerberus added a little more gently. Syaoran stared at the golden lion face in surprised.

"I guess." Syaoran said, shifting uncomfortable.

"You better hurry up; I'm guessing Sakura-chan is worried about you for taking so long. Plus I smell food." Syaoran sweat-dropped heavily at the guardian beast end comment. Was this stuff animal serious? Even in its true form, it still thought about food? Syaoran shook his head in disbelief and took a few slow; steady steps threw the room, still leaning upon Cerberus shoulder.

Somehow, despite Cerberus huge size, they managed to both make it to the kitchen in relatively one piece.

Sakura was fussing around the kitchen. Though he had been watching her do the same thing for over two weeks, he was now watching her threw a whole new set of eyes, threw his human eyes.

He leant against the kitchen mention, watching her move comfortably around the small, warm yellow kitchen. Syaoran almost felt that he was in heaven when the rich smell of miso soup tickled his nose.

"Wow, you really are hungry! Didn't I feed you enough when you were in wolf form?" Sakura asked, her face filled with concern as she finally noticed how much attention he was paying to the soup.

"No, it's not that. It just I really feel like eating something like a human." Syaoran explained. His voice was getting stronger and his throat was not as dry as it had been thanks to the glass of water Sakura had placed in front of him the moment he and Cerberus had walked into the kitchen.

"Here, eat." Sakura said as she placed a bowl of steaming hot soup in front of him.

"Thanks." Syaoran tug his spoon into the soup and started to eat at time speed.

"Wow, this is good." Syaoran said.

"What? You didn't expect as much?" Sakura asked with a teasing grin. Syaoran just smiled and went back to eating at top speed.

Sakura refilled his bowl three times before he even showed signs of slowing up.

"Are you sure I gave you enough food, when you were a wolf?" Sakura asked still worried. Syaoran rolled his eyes.

"I'm just hungry." He stated and continued to finish his fourth bowl.

"No, _really_?" Sakura asked sarcastically.

Syaoran didn't respond, he just got up from the table, his legs still unsteady and walked into the kitchen to the sink. Sakura revolved in her chair so that she could stare at him in the kitchen. She let out a little giggle.

"What?" Syaoran asked, annoyed.

"I never could image you washing dishes before." She laughed, "It just doesn't seem like a Li Clan Chosen One thing to do, that's all."

Syaoran glared at her, but continued to wash the pots and bowls that had needed to be washed.

"My Mother and Sisters made me learn these skills." He said unexpectedly. "They said that if I was going to live by myself I would have to learn to take care of myself, and," he hesitated for a moment, "and my sisters said that if I find a girl and if I made her do all the house work, that's surest way to being dumped." He ended hurriedly. Sakura grinned in amusement.

"The women in your family are wise." Sakura said in a wise tone.

"And scary." Syaoran added under his breathe, though Sakura heard it and laughed.

"Oooh, you'll be in _soo_ much trouble when I tell Meilin." She laughed, Syaoran just glared at her, before finishing up washing up.

Sakura watch him, now feeling sad. He adapted so easily to so many things. When he had first turned into a wolf he was stiff and sore, but he had quickly gotten over that. Now that he was human again, it was the same deal, stiff and sore, but now he moved with unconscious grace, not of cause ballerina grace, but one who knew their surroundings and was comfortable within them.

"What?" Syaoran asked, noticing Sakura's sad look.

"What are we going to do with you?" she asked quietly. He just shrugged.

"Take me out and shot me?" he asked in a teasing tone. Sakura blinked, it took her a moment to process his full sentence and its full meaning.

"When did you get a sense of humour?" she asked, mildly curious, though her main reason was so that her mind wouldn't be able to reconstruct his words, leaving out the 'shot me' part.

Syaoran shrugged again.

"I entered middle school and suddenly I had a sense of humour." He said still shrugging.

"Meilin clung to you, didn't she? and the boys in your class teased you two because of it?" Sakura guessed.

"They didn't tease us for long." Syaoran replied, a dark glint in his eyes and an evil smirk playing on his lips.

"And you have dark sense of humour too." Sakura sighed.

"And when did you become so observant and down-to-earth and not screaming 'hoe' every three seconds?" Syaoran asked, taking a seat opposite her.

She kicked his chair under the table.

"I wasn't that bad." She snapped. Syaoran raised an eyebrow at her and smirked.

"Ok, I was. I don't know, I just grew out of it, I suppose. Anyway, there isn't much for me to 'hoe' about these days. And I needed to become observant or would be able to keep up with the latest trends in school and the who's with who drama's that go on nearly every single day." She rolled her eyes in exasperation.

Syaoran nodded in agreement.

He eyed Sakura, taking her in with human eyes. Her hair was longer now, hanging down pass her shoulders, flaring outwards. Her face had matured, still having it softness to it from when she was ten. But it now looked more like an adults face, slender and more curved. She was of cause taller and had filled out and speaking of curved! This made him embarrassed and made him feel like a pervert, but it was true. She was curved!

He was taller than her, her head probably only just able to graze his chin.

She suddenly rubbed her face. Her face looked tired and worn.

She got up from the table, stretching her arms above her head as she did so, Syaoran looked quickly away as she did this, as to avoid seeing her bare stomach as her shirt rose with her stretch.

"Great, Maths now." She grumbled to herself. Syaoran looked back at her, his ears perking at the word 'Maths'

"Maths?" he asked eagerly. Sakura, seeing his face, stared at him with an expression that read 'are-you-insane?'

"Oh, I forgot you were good a Maths." She mumbled grudgingly. He nodded and smirked smugly at her. She made a rude hand gesture at him, which only made him laugh. Never, not even in his wildest dreams, did he ever imagine "innocent" Sakura making such a rude gesture.

"Do you want my help?" he asked, hoping to calm her down somewhat. The last thing he needed right now was an angry Card-Mistress on his back.

Sakura's facial features changed, going from anger to surprise to thoughtful, until finally a slow, soft smile graced her lips.

"Yeah, alright." She consented and ran out of the room. He listened to her footfalls on the stairs and along the hall, wondering how someone so small and thin could be so heavily footed. He shrugged. He wasn't game enough to ask Sakura why this was.

She reappeared moments later, carrying a thick textbook and a several note books in her arms.

"I'm surprised you gave in so willing to letting me help." Syaoran commented as she set her books on to the table.

"It's Maths. I'll sink to any low as long as I can get it done." Sakura stated flicking threw her maths book with great concentration, searching for the topic that her Maths class was doing.

"So if a Dark Sorcerer comes along and ask you to join him on world conquest in exchange for doing your Maths homework, I have to get you out there really, really fast?" Syaoran asked amused.

"Yup, something like that! Ah ha, here we are." She pointed to her homework exercises in the book. Syaoran slid the book in front of him to read what she needed to do. _Linear Equations!_ Well, it could be worst.

"You can't remember what ymx+b means, do you?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

"Shut up!"

"Ok, this is what you have to do; m is the gradient, which is rise over run…"

For over an hour they worked their way threw the set exercise, plus the ones that Sakura hadn't done previously. Sakura felt as though she had learnt more about Linear Equation in that past hour then she had in the past week.

"Sakura?"

"Hmm?"

"Where's your Father?" Syaoran had only just become aware of the fact that apart from them and the background noise of Kero's video game, the rest of the house was totally quiet. Sakura's shoulders stiffen.

"He's at the university." She mumbled keeping her head down, staring intently at the next graph in the textbook.

"It's ten at night?" Syaoran persisted, staring at the clock on the wall.

Now that he thought about he could only remember seeing Fujitaka Kinomoto twice over the past two weeks. Both times Sakura had been at school and he had been pacing impatiently up in her room.

The first time, he had heard the front door open, he had immediately thought it might have be an ogre or Touya, (but there really wasn't much difference between the two, so he wasn't exactly sure which and wasn't all that thrilled at the idea of finding out). He and Kero, however, went to check it out anyway. Kero had said that if it was Touya, it wouldn't matter whether he saw him or not because he now knew about the whole CardCaptor story.

It however had turned out to be neither of the two things Syaoran had suspected. When Kero and Syaoran looked down into the basement, they saw Fujutaka looked frantically around at his books, as if searching for something of great importance. It seemed that he didn't find the thing he had been searching for, but he did however grab some books before heading back up the stairs to the main part of the house.

Kero had flown away and hid by the time Fujutaka had closed and locked the basement door. Syaoran on the other hand only made it to the dining table, hiding underneath though he had no idea why. It didn't matter anyway.

"Looks like Sakura has finally gotten herself a dog." Fujutaka chuckled when he saw the pair of amber eyes glowering at him underneath the table.

"You be a good boy and take good care of her ok, please." Fujutaka mumbled, before he had left the house.

The second time he came to the house was shorter than the first visit for he was only returning books and picking up some new ones, without the frantic search for whatever he had been hunting for last time.

Syaoran had tagged along with him this time, just following him around, like he thought a normal dog would do, though many who had seen him had comment that he was the strangest dog they had ever seen, both in looks and personality.

Both times Syaoran saw Fujutaka he didn't tell Sakura. Why he didn't, he wasn't sure. He felt as Fujutaka was on his own special, dangerous mission that he was leaving his children out of, to protect them from harm and it wasn't his place to tell. But still, couldn't he still come home and visit his daughter? Though it wasn't as if she was totally alone all the time. There was the stuff animal, which was useless at the best of time, but at least he made background noise. Her brother and Yukito visited at least four times a week and her friends came around most afternoons or she went to theirs. So she wasn't totally alone.

"Have I done this, right?" Sakura's voice broke threw his musing, bringing him sharply back to reality.

He looked at her working, checking that she had used _rise over run_ and hadn't forgotten to find the _y-intercept_, which she seemed to be in the habit of doing.

"Looks fine. You need to neaten up your workings and write your examples bigger so that you can actually comprehend what you need to do, but apart from that you're doing fine." He said. Sakura blinked at him, surprise written all over her face. Did Syaoran just praise her? Ok, the praise was sort of drowned out but him telling her off about her writing but still, he had praised her. She smiled happily.

"What are you so happy about?" he demanded, going red in the face. He gently but firmly slapped his hand on the upside of the back of her head.

"Idiot!" he grumbled as he packed away her books and scrape bits of paper into a neat pile at side of the table.

He looked back at the clock, 10:30.

"You should probably go to bed, you look like your about to fall asleep right here." He muttered, looking at her tired face.

"Yeah, probably, I haven't been sleeping well lately." She admitted.

"Why?"

She shrugged.

"I'm just having really weird dreams that don't make any sense to me. My cards are involved but their not like the main factor like they were years ago. Now there's this dark glowing archway gate that seems to be the centre of it all. Does that ring any bells for you?" she asked him.

He frowned in concentration.

"Vaguely, but I'm not sure. You should probably ring up the four-eyed freak and ask him about it." Syaoran grumbled at the thought of Eriol. Sakura laughed.

"I'm going to bed." She said and got up from the table, swaying a bit on her feet as she did so. Syaoran bounded to his feet and steadied her in his arms.

"Thanks." She mumbled. She looked up at him, questioning as to why he wasn't letting go of her now that she had regained her balance.

"Err, right… sorry." He quickly released her waist. She gazed at him, still questioning his reluctances to let her go. Then she gave up trying to figure out his motive and turned and started towards the stairs. Half way there she stopped and stared back at him, frowning.

"Where are you going to sleep? I mean, you can't sleep on that mattress that Tomoyo made for you when you where in wolf form."

"I'll just sleep on the couch." Syaoran shrugged. Sakura pulled a face and stalked to the linen closet and pulled out the blankets that she had replaced before and a pillow.

Then she stopped and smacked a hand to her forehead.

"I'm such an idiot." She moaned, then turned to look at Syaoran. "You can sleep in my brother's bedroom; it's just a spare room now with a bed and some of his old clothes, so you're free to use it."

"Err and I want to use your brother's room, because?" Syaoran asked. Sakura rolled her eyes at him.

"If your tired, you can sleep there." And with that she went upstairs, not looking back at him. Syaoran stood there for a few moments, listening to the sounds of Sakura getting ready for bed. She made more noise then he thought was probably needed for someone just getting ready for bed, but then, again this was the girl who walked like there were ten elephants in the house.

Finally, when there was no more noise, he went upstairs himself, turning off lights as he went. He took a shower, to loosen up his limps and to relax himself before the painful change back into a wolf. He cringed at the idea and had to do the whole calmly process all over again.

When he felt finally calm and relaxed he walked into Touya's room, only wearing the pair of old pants Sakura had given him before to wear. He looked around the room for a moment before closing the door to it and walked back to Sakura's door, opening it gently and peered in.

Sakura was fast asleep, twitching slightly, a frown visible on her face as if she was still trying to figure out math equations in her sleep.

He felt a sudden ache for her. He had never thought much of what premonition dreams could do to someone, how they could disrupt someone's life.

He looked around her room, feeling safe and welcome. With his second scan of the room he groaned. On the floor was a mattress, piled with blankets and pillows. He sweat-dropped. Had she actually thought he would decide on her room over her brother's? That he would actually want to be in her room? With her?

Ok, obviously she had, but she might have done this because he, in wolf form, had been quite happy to sleep in her room. But that was different; he was a boy now, not a wolf. A teenaged boy! Wasn't she worried that he might do something indecent? He sweat-dropped again, heavier this time. Like he actually would do anything!

He flopped onto the mattress, wrapping the blankets around him, feeling grateful to be human again, even if it was only for a short time.

It didn't take him long to fall into a deep, dreamless sleep… which of cause he would be woken up from far too soon by the excruciating pain of turning back into a wolf.

* * *

**Author's Note:** So how was it? Was this an interesting chapter? I promise things will started to make sense and that things will be explained soon.  
Thanks for reading and please review, though I'll probably keep writing this even if no one reads it, I have a friend who reads it anyway. Sorry, I'm really down and I'm still recovering from a bad week and a Maths test.


	6. The Problem with Guys

**Author's Note:** Sorry that's its been soo long since the last update to this, but I really have been busy! I've just finished Year 11 so that meant I spent most of my time last term studying for my finals, so yeah, don't be too mean to me about taking so long.  
I'm trying to slow down the pace of this story a bit.  
But in trying to do that i had to cut some stuff out that i was planning on doing here in this chapter, which in a way was a good thing but also a bad! A good thing because I wasn't sure how i was going to explain what i had been planning to happen in this chapter later on in the story but also bad because i'm now not sure how i'm going to rope what i took out here back in. But it's all good, what i took out was Sakura stuff and this fic at the moment is mainly centred around what's going on with Syaoran.  
Alright I'll shut up and let you read.

* * *

**Chapter 6**

**The Problem with Guys**

"Wow, so Syaoran-kun really turned into a human last night? And then turned back into a wolf this morning?" Tomoyo asked her eyes wide with fascination.

"I wish I could have video tapped it." She sighed.

"No, you don't." Sakura said quickly, her face flushing deep red. Tomoyo stared at her questioningly before an idea began to form in her head, changing from wolf to human he must have been… she chuckled in amusement.

"It's not funny." Sakura argued, her face still bright red. Tomoyo only chuckled harder as her best friend's face just got redder and redder.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh." Tomoyo giggled.

"No, you shouldn't." Sakura mumbled her face still red.

"It hurt him a lot to change from wolf to boy then back again. And when he turned back into a wolf this morning it took him almost three hours from the moment he turned back, to be able to walk. It hurt him so much to just to move his head and I couldn't do anything to help him, all I could do was stand there and watch him" she whispered hanging her head.

Tomoyo hugged her friend tightly.

"I'm sorry, Sakura-chan, I had no idea. I'm so sorry."

"It's ok; I mean he was fine when I left, still sore though, he tries really hard not to show it though."

"He doesn't want to make Sakura-chan worry about him that's all." Tomoyo said trying to soothe Sakura.

"Nah," Sakura said, shaking her head, "it's probably some stupid Li Clan honour thing, not to show any pain or weakness." She shrugged.

"That might be true for some parts, but I really think he's trying to stop you from worrying about him." Tomoyo argued gently. Sakura shook her head again and went back to her desk by the window, for their History teacher had just entered the room, calling the class to order.

Tomoyo wasn't all that fond of history, unless it was the history of fashion and clothes, but she had joined the class anyway to be with Sakura, who to everyone's great surprise was actually quite good at it. Then again, this might have had something to with having an archaeologist for a father.

Either way, she was good at it and enjoyed it and now History was one of her favourite class at school along with Japanese and Art.

She looked over at Sakura, whose complete attention was on their teacher and sigh. There was never any note passing in this class.

She looked around the classroom and noticed that she hadn't been the only person watching Sakura.

Leonard or Len Ichijo was watching Sakura also and with great interest. His blue eyes took in every movement Sakura made.

Tomoyo let out another soft chuckle, Syaoran was in for some serious competition. But even though she found the Len interesting challenge for Syaoran she also felt that there was something strange about the English boy. A strange something that made her nervous.

She wasn't sure what it was or why it made her feel as she did, but something was different about this boy, like there had been with Eriol and Syaoran.

As she continued to watch him, his eyes moved from Sakura's attentive form to meet Tomoyo curious, guarded violet eyes. He grinned at her and she smiled back, her gentle, polite smile, but she was still uneasy.

She remembered when he had transferred into their class last year. He had be polite and soft spoken and nearly all the girls in the class (year and all the years above and below, too) had fallen for him.

He had smiled around at all of them, but when he lay eyes upon Sakura, his smile had faulted for a fraction of second, a look of fear that no one else had notice except Tomoyo, who at first had taken the look as one that a new student tried to hide on their first day. But the fact that Leonard was quick to struck up a conversation with Sakura on that first day, quite like Eriol had, that had bothered her.

When she had asked Sakura about how she felt about it, Sakura had just grumbled that it seemed she stuck out like a sore thumb to all new transfer students and they all seemed to hold that against her. To that, Tomoyo had to agree with her, Sakura did seem to have a talent for attracting transfer students attention and they usually had some magical background to them.

She sighed; sometimes she really wondered how Sakura was going to finish school with all the magical dramas in her life. Oh well, at least she had the chance to make some new, improved, gorgeous costumes. She sighed again, this time dreamily at the idea of making new costumes for Sakura and for her to film her in.

* * *

Sakura dragged herself towards home. Her book bag felt so heavy, with so many texts books. Why was she taking Geography and Physics again? Oh, right because they might actually help her with being an Archaeologist, not that anyone actually thought she would become one. She grumbled about that. Why did no one seem think she was capable of becoming an Archaeologist? She wasn't that stupid! And the idea wasn't so far fetch for her… or was it?

"Sakura-san!" Sakura jumped at the sound of her name being called and turned quickly on her heels to look behind her. A blonde haired boy was jogging towards from the school soccer field.

"Ichijo-…. I mean Len-kun? What is it?"

"Nothing." He said as stopped in front of her, grinning. His hair was tousled by the sweat, his school bag was hanging from one shoulder and he carried a soccer ball under one arm.

"I just saw you walking by yourself and thought I might join you on the walk home… is that alright?" he looked uncertain.

"Um, sure, ok I don't mind at all." Sakura said, her face going red.

"Oh good, I'm glad." And with they started to walk or roller-skate slowly in Sakura's case.

"So why where you staying after school so late?" Len asked, trying to build a conversation to solve the awkward silence between them.

"Um, it was Journalism club."

"I didn't know your were in the Journalism club." Len said, looking surprised. Sakura's face went read again.

"I'm not actually a member, but I'm asked to write articles, from time to time, if someone's sick." Sakura shrugged.

"Oh, well that sounds fun." He said, though he looked a little speechless.

"Why don't you just join? Wouldn't that be easier for you and them?"

"Oh, um conflicts with cheerleading practise and since I'm now team captain, I can't really leave to join the Journalism club."

"Why don't you join the Journalism club when Cheerleading season is over?" Len asked curious. Sakura shrugged.

"I'm busy doing other stuff at the moment; I have so much homework and assignments to do, that the idea of writing at least two articles a week, makes me cringe." She shuddered to prove her point. Len laughed, then he looked away, up at the sky a sad look in his eyes.

"My Mum was a journalist, before she died." He admitted quietly. Sakura blinked at him in surprise.

"I'm sorry."

He shrugged.

"She died over two years ago, so we're pretty much over it now, that's why we moved here. Dad always hated America and England and the only reason we lived in those places was because Mum loved them and work there. After she died there was no point living in those places anymore." He looked away into the distance, his eye unfocused.

They went on in silence, until they came to Sakura's house.

"Well, bye, I'll see you tomorrow." Sakura said, smiling brightly up at him, before turning to open her front gate. Len grabbed her slender wrist, gently but firmly, spinning her around to face him once again.

"There was a reason why I walked you home." He said his deep blue eyes boring into her. Sakura could feel her cheeks heat up but she remained silent.

"I was wondering, since your not with anyone," he sent her a questioning look, but she remained silent, only because words had seemly failed her. He continued on, in a strong, level voice. "I was wondering if you'll go out with me." he stared straight into her eyes, as if he could see right into her soul. Something about his eyes freaked her out and she struggled to look away from him.

"I-I…" her voice seemed to not want to work. However she was saved by another voice or bark.

Syaoran, somehow finding away out of her house, came walking down the front path, growling deeply from his chest.

Len sighed.

"Your dog really doesn't like me, does he?" He asked Sakura calmly. Sakura, still without words, just nodded.

"He's very protective of you." Len continued, "does he do this to all the guys who ask you out?"

At that comment Sakura let out a hysterical laugh and seemed to have finally found her voice.

"I don't get asked out much."

Both Human boy and Wolf Boy stared at her in disbelief.

"It's true; boys don't like me… that way." Sakura suddenly felt a wave of self-consciousness flow threw her being. Why had she said that? Why couldn't she have just said that she wasn't really interested in any of the boys at school? Or that she wasn't interested in dating at all until she was threw with her exams? That she was just waiting for the right guy to come along and ask her? Why did she babble that out in front of these _two_?

_**Are you Nuts?**_

"Are you Nuts?" both boys asked at the exact time, Sakura let out another little giggle, before hanging her head, wanting to desperately escape to her room and lock Syaoran out of it.

"Um, I'm going inside now. Um, I'll see you tomorrow." She squeaked before bolting threw her front gates, up the front path and around the house out of sight.

Both boys watched after her, dumbstruck.

Syaoran moved to follow her, but then remembered the blonde boy and growled at him warningly.

The blonde raised an eyebrow at him, as if challenging him to do something. Syaoran snarled at the boy again.

"Wow, you really are protective of her, Little Wolf." Len sniggered, leaning against the side wall, grinning teasingly at Syaoran.

"Interesting curse you have on you! Wonder how you're going to get it off." Len continued calmly. Syaoran stared up at the boy, the growl in his chest growing deeper. _What was this boy?_

"You had better go after her, make sure we didn't scare her too much and regret that she hasn't been as out going as most girls her age." Len said and moved to leave.

_**Who are you?**_ Syaoran demanded.

The blonde turned back to look at him, a strange smile lighting up his face.

"I'm Ichijo Leonard." The boy said and with that he left, leaving Syaoran wondering what the hell was going on.

He, however, followed Len's advice and went after Sakura. He found her in her room, on her bed, a pillow over her head.

_**Eh, do I want to know?**_

"Oh, shut UP." Came the snappy reply that was muffled by the pillow.

_**What's wrong?**_ Syaoran asked feeling exasperated. This however was not the right thing to say at this moment or the right tone to say it in either. For Sakura sat up suddenly, her face red with anger and from crying… crying?

"What's wrong? What's WRONG? I have no life, that's what's wrong." She screamed at him. Syaoran backtrack, he had never seen Sakura like this.

_**What do you mean you don't have a life? You do! You're alive aren't you?**_

"I don't have a life that normal teenage girls have!" she snapped in frustration.

_**And you want one like theirs because…?**_

"Because, I want to be able to go on dates with guys, that don't get scared off by my Cards because they get jealous!"

_**Your Cards get **_**Jealous?** Syaoran asked amused.

"It's not FUNNY!" she threw a pillow at him, which he dodged easily.

_**So you can't go on date's big deal! I can't either, you know.**_

"its not just dates, I can't do normal girl things, like go to the mall and talk about boys and complain about homework, because I'm too bloody busy trying to safe the world from destruction every other week and NO ONE HAS A SINGLE CLUE I'M EVEN DOING IT!" with this last bit she screamed herself horse. Realising this, she broke down sobbing, wrapping her arms around her legs, pulling them into her chest and burying her head into her knees.

Syaoran stared at her, not knowing what he should or could say. How could he possibly relate to her problems, when he had grown up with magic being a part of his life?

He hopped up on to the bed and gently nuzzled her fingers wrapped around her ankles.

Off to the side, Syaoran saw Kero hovering nervously by the door, his teddy bear face sad and slightly rejected.

_**Sakura?**_

"Go away." She whispered hoarsely.

_**No, I won't.**_

She lifted her head to stare at him.

"Why? Why won't you all just leave me alone?" she asked, tears still rolling down her face.

_**Because I don't want to.**_

"But you don't want or need my help, why are you still here when you could so easily get away from me?" she demanded.

_**Because I don't want to! Get that threw your thick skull! Anyway, I'm not going to leave you with these Bounty Hunters about.**_

"thanks." She whispered, "But you're going to leave me in the end, anyway."

_**Oh yeah? Want to make a bet?**_

"Well, you are! Everyone always does, I mean you've already left me twice! What's a third time going to do?"

_**I'm not going to leave you! Not willingly anyway.**_ Sakura snorted in disbelief.

_**I swear, I won't leave you, not without telling you and promising full heartedly that I'll return.**_

"Fine." Sakura submitted to the sense the he was trying to knock into her.

"I won't leave you either, Sakura-chan." Kero whispered. Sakura looked at her guardian and smiled, opening her arms to hug him. Syaoran glared at the stuffed animal grudgingly. It hadn't done _anything_! And yet it still got hugged.

"Oh stop complaining." Sakura giggled and hugged him too. He blinked in surprise, before happily accepting the hug.

"Kaijou? Where are you?"

They all jumped at the sound of Touya's voice bellowing threw the house.

"You really do need to stop calling her that." They heard Yukito argue softly.

"Why, she still response to it and gets all worked up about being called a monster, I don't see why I should stop. Plus it makes her happy, when I call her a 'Kaijou'"

Sakura smiled softly at her brother's words, before rubbing her face furiously with her hands. When she removed them an angry looked was plastered on her face.

"DON'T CALL ME KAIJOU!" she yelled back, swinging herself off her bed and stomping out her door and down stairs.

"See I told you she still responds." Touya laughed, upon seeing his little sister's angry face. Yukito laughed at the glaring match between the two siblings.

* * *

Len walked down a dark street, towards his house, that was located just on the border of town. He wasn't looking forward to getting home and listening to his father complaints.

"Dad, I'm home." Len yelled as he walked threw the front door.

"How was school?" his father called from his study.

"Fine."

"What about the girl? Has she given you an answer yet?" Len groaned as he leant against the study doorway. His father was sitting in front of his computer. His black hair was ruffled and his clothes neat but old.

"No, she hasn't." his father grunted in disapproval.

"Dad, um… why can't we just stop this, now, before something terrible happens?" _to her_.Len said moving forward from the door to kneel beside his father's chair.

"We can't, we've come too far. Anyway, the council is very pleased with our process."

"But Dad, I don't think Kinomoto Sakura is such a big threat as the council seems to think she is." Len muttered.

"Len, just because you've gone soft on the girl doesn't mean we have, let me remind you that her powers are evil."

"I don't think her powers are." Len argued. "She has never used them for anything but good."

"That doesn't mean she might not use them for evil, one day."

"Dad…"

"Len, just stick with the plan, the sooner you do that the sooner this will all be over."

"He won't let her die." Len muttered getting up from his crouch and stalked out of the room, up to his own.

* * *

**Author's Note:** So what do ya think of this?  
I was planning of cutting the end out with Len and his Dad but decided I would just keep it in. Len's not evil but that's all i'm saying.


End file.
